By  the  Same  Author 
MYSTICISM  AND  MODERN  LIFE 


RELIGION   AS 
EXPERIENCE 


BY 

JOHN  WRIGHT  BUCKHAM 

PBOFESSOB  OF  CHRISTIAN  THEOLOGY  IN  PACIFIC  SCHOOL  OF  RELIGION 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 

NEW  YORK    !    CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1922,  by 
JOHN  WRIGHT  BUCKHAM 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


DEDICATED 

TO  THE   MEMBERS,   IN  BOTH  WORLDS, 
OP  CROMBIE  STREET  CHURCH 

IN  SALEM,  MASSACHUSETTS, 

IN   GRATEFUL  REMEMBRANCE 

OF   A   PASTORATE   OF  TWELVE   YEARS, 

WHICH   HAS   BECOME   TO   THE   AUTHOR 

A  FRAGRANT  MEMORY 

AND   AN  ENDURING  INCENTIVE 

TO   FAITH   IN   GOD   AND   MEN 


48'. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

.. 

PREFACE 9 

RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE  .  tf. 11 

CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE  . . .  \<. 32 

EXPERIENTIAL  THEOLOGY  H 50 

CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  THE  RELIGIONS 61 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION 80 

MYSTICISM  AS  EXPERIENCE 102 

CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE  AND  CHRISTIAN  UNITY,  if..    .  118 


PREFACE 

THE  following  addresses  and  articles,  all  con- 
cerned with  aspects  of  a  central  theme,  will,  I 
think,  exhibit  a  unity,  and  I  hope  a  harmony, 
such  as  to  warrant  bringing  them  together  in  a 
volume.  The  varied  viewpoints  of  the  reviews 
in  which  the  articles  appeared  indicate  how 
widely  welcomed  is  the  discussion  of  religion  as 
experience. 

My  thanks  are  extended  to  The  University 
of  California  Chronicle,  The  Constructive  Quar- 
terly, the  Methodist  Quarterly  Review,  The 
Hibbert  Journal,  The  Homiletic  Review,  and 
The  Biblical  World  for  permission  to  use  the 
respective  articles  accredited  to  each  in  the 
text.  Further  indebtednesses  will  appear  to  the 
reader  as  he  pursues  his  way;  and  others  there 
are  which  neither  writer  nor  reader  can  de- 
fine, including  One  which  I  trust  has  not  been 
unfelt  throughout. 

JOHN  WRIGHT  BUCKHAM. 

Berkeley,  California. 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE1 

THE  deeper  thought  of  our  time  is  turning 
away  from  religion  as  dogma,  as  sentiment,  as 
theory,  as  ethics,  to  religion  as  experience.  Not 
that  this  concept  excludes  the  others,  but  is  at 
once  the  more  definitive  and  inclusive. 


What,  then,  do  we  mean — let  this  be  our 
first  inquiry — by  the  term  "experience"  in  its 
common,  not  in  its  technical,  sense?  In  the 
first  place,  we  mean — do  we  not? — something 
that  is  one's  own,  that  affects  oneself,  that  has 
penetrated  the  privacy  of  his  individual  ex- 
istence. We  mean — to  use  a  crude  illustration 
— something  like  what  would  happen  to  the 
puppet  in  the  shooting  gallery  if  he  were  con- 
scious and  able  to  say,  when  the  ball  or  the 
bullet  strikes,  "I  am  hit."  Experience,  that  is, 
means  "I  am  hit."  Whether  any  others  are  hit 
at  the  same  time  or  not  is  a  secondary  matter. 
The  main  fact  for  the  experient  is:  "This  thing, 
whatever  it  may  be,  has  come  home  to  me.  It 
has  entered  and  domiciled  in  my  private  in- 

1  An  address  delivered  before  the  Philosophical  Union  of  the  University 
of  California  and  published  in  The  University  Chronicle,  October,  1915. 

11 


12        RELIGION  A3  EXPERIENCE 

closure,  where  I  must  live  with  it,  for  better  or 
worse,  for  longer  or  shorter." 

In  the  second  place,  experience  means  some- 
thing felt.  One  cannot  have  an  experience  with- 
out sensation  or  emotion  of  some  kind.  The 
experient  cannot  be  indifferent — except  in  the 
sense  of  schooling  himself  not  to  yield  to  his 
feelings.  The  puppet  in  the  shooting  gallery, 
to  have  an  experience,  would  have  not  only 
to  recognize,  "/  am  hit,"  but  "I  am  hit.  I  feel 
it."  Now  there  is  feeling  and  feeling.  Nor  is 
it  a  mere  difference  of  intensity  but  of  kind  and 
quality.  We  have  been  too  gross  altogether  in 
our  ideas  of  feeling,  as  if  it  were  all  of  one 
nature,  yet  Janus-faced — pleasure  and  pain. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  colors  and  tones  in 
feeling  as  diverse  and  delicate  as  in  music  and 
painting,  and  some  are  both  pleasurable  and 
painful  at  the  same  time.  /  We  need  a  psy- 
chology so  sensitive  to  these  differences  that  it 
would  be  no  longer  possible  to  mass  all  our 
emotions  and  sensations  indiscriminately  under 
the  one  term  "feeling"  and  then  pass  predi- 
cates upon  it  as  if  it  were  all  alike  devoid  of 
intelligence  and  of  ethical  and  spiritual  quali- 
ties and  values.  There  are  feelings  that  are 
obscuring  and  debasing  and  there  are  those 
that  are  illuminating  and  sacred. 

Once  more,  an  experience  is  something  known. 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE        13 

It  is  not  only  something  felt  but  something 
apprehended.  I  do  not  mean  understood.  That 
would  involve  an  outside  and  all-around  knowl- 
edge of  an  experience  in  all  its  relations  and 
implications.  But  it  is  something  grasped  as 
real  and  thus  set  among  the  facts  enough  of 
whose  own  nature  is  seen,  so  that  when  it  re- 
turns one  can  say  to  it:  "Here  you  are  again* 
I  know  you;  you  and  I  have  been  in  close  quar- 
ters. I  am  aware  not  only  of  the  feelings  which 
you  arouse;  I  know  something  of  yourself."  Into 
the  discussion  of  what  kind  of  knowledge  this 
of  experience  is,  we  will  not  enter.  As  Bergson 
would  say,  it  is  at  least  inside  knowledge. 

We  are  not  meaning  to  say  by  this  that  ex- 
periential knowledge  is  purely  empirical  in  its 
nature.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  purely  em- 
pirical knowledge.  The  mind  enters  into  all 
knowledge  as  the  constructive,  architectonic 
factor.  What  I  am  insisting  upon  is  the  su- 
periority of  the  kind  of  knowledge  which — 
though  constructed  by  the  mind — is  inner, 
sympathetic,  experiential,  to  that  which  is 
external,  descriptive,  discursive. 

We  have  been  describing  experience  as  if  it 
were  something  purely  passive,  at  least  until 
we  began  to  speak  of  the  knowledge  factor  in 
it.  This  receptive  element  is  essential.  Expe- 
rience does  not  arise  out  of  the  mind  itself 


u 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 


alone.  It  is  due  to  something  or  someone  that 
impinges  upon  us.  And  yet  in  the  activity 
that  arises  out  of  this  impingement  the  mind, 
or,  rather,  the  whole  self,  asserts  itself  and  thus 
constructs  the  experience  and  makes  it  what  it 
is.  So  that  it  is  not  the  puppet  who  best  illus- 
trates the  experience,  but  the  person  who  does 
the  hitting.  Better  still,  experience  includes 
both  action  and  reaction,  the  experience  both  of 
the  hit  and  the  hitter.  In  every  genuine  ex- 
perience one  is  both  passive  and  active,  both 
receptive  and  constructive. 

It  is  this  wholeness  and  awareness  that  char- 
acterize experience.  Experience  is  not  pure 
sensation.  Neither  is  it  pure  reflection.  It  is 
thinking,  feeling,  willing,  all  in  one.  It  is 
realization. 

II 

If  such  is  the  nature  of  experience  in  gen- 
eral, what  of  that  form  of  it  that  we  call  "reli- 
gious" experience? 

Manifestly,  this  is  an  order  of  experience 
outside  the  realm  of  our  ordinary  or  sense  ex- 
perience. It  is  not  necessarily  supernatural  in 
the  sense  of  being  remote  from  our  every-day 
life  as  persons,  but  it  is  extra-sensuous.  It  has 
to  do  with  another  and  higher  sphere  of  reality. 
Again  we  must  remind  you  that  we  are  using 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE        15 

the  term  "experience"  in  a  far  from  strictly 
Kantian  sense.  But  it  is  a  common  usage;  and 
wisdom  is  justified  of  her  children. 

In  the  realm  of  religion  experience  has  the 
same  qualities  characteristic  of  all  experience. 
It  is  something  directly  felt  and  known  by 
oneself  for  himself.  In  this  sphere  experience 
often  goes  by  the  name  of  "faith,"  which  is  "a 
conviction  of  an  axiomatic  character  which  re- 
fuses to  be  analyzed  into  reasons,  and  which, 
indeed,  precedes  all  reasons."2 

Is  there,  then,  a  religious  experience  of  this 
distinct  and  self -attesting  kind?  If  so,  what 
is  it? 

In  searching  for  an  answer  to  this  question, 
in  the  first  place  we  would  have  you  take  pre- 
liminary account  of  the  very  general  convic- 
tion, or  impression,  that  reality  is  wider  and 
more  inclusive  than  the  limits  of  the  material 
world.  As  President  Woodrow  Wilson  once 
said:  "Even  men  of  science  now  feel  that  the 
explanation  which  they  give  of  the  universe  is 
so  partial  an  explanation,  so  incomplete  an 
explanation,  that  for  the  benefit  of  their  own 
thought — quite  aside  from  the  benefit  of  their 
own  souls — it  is  necessary  that  something 
should  be  added  to  it.  They  know  that  there 

2  See  Rudolf  Eucken,  by  Abel  J.  Jones,  p.  76. 


16        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

is  a  spiritual  segment  in  the  complete  circle  of 
knowledge  which  they  cannot  supply  and  which 
must  be  supplied  if  the  whole  circle  is  not  to 
show  its  imperfection  and  incompleteness."3 

If  this  is  true,  as  I  think  many  men  of  science 
would  themselves  say,  it  is  extremely  signifi- 
cant. It  indicates  thar*those  who  know  most 
about  the  physical  world  feel  that  it  does  not 
encompass  all  reality /'that  there  is  something 
over  and  above  material  existence  which  can- 
not be  ignored^  If  scientists  feel  this  way, 
how  much  more  the  rest  of  us,  bathed  as  we 
are  in  mystery,  moved  by  impulses  which  we 
cannot  explain  and  thoughts  which  we  cannot 
fathom — except  when  we  are  philosophizing. 

Yet  this  sense  of  the  unexplained  margin  is 
only  the  negative  side  of  this  experience.  It 
has  a  positive  side.  Countless  millions  of  men 
and  women  have  had  the  conviction,  ranging 
all  the  way  from  a  dim  and  shadowy  impres- 
sion to  the  most  complete  and  regnant  cer- 
tainty, of  a  Something,  or  a  Someone,  Out 
There  or  Near  at  Hand,  Far  Away  or  Within 
the  Soul,  Transcendent  or  Immanent,  or  both. 
The  savage  religionist  called  It  "Mana";  the 
Israelite  dared  not  name  It;  Confucius  termed 
It  "Heaven";  the  Brahman  "Atman,"  the 


1  Hartford  Seminary  Record,  vol.  rix,  No.  3,  p.  227. 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE        17 

Self;  Plato  conceived  of  It  as  "The  Good"; 
Aristotle  as  "The  Unmoved  Mover";  Plotinus, 
"The  One";  Spinoza,  "The  All";  Jesus  called 
It  "Father";  Paul,  "Him  that  filleth  all  in  all"; 
Hegel,  "Spirit";  Fichte,  "Will";  Matthew  Ar- 
nold, "The  Power  not  Ourselves";  Spencer, 
"The  Unknowable."  All  these  are  ideas,  at- 
tempts to  enfold  a  Reality  that  proves  too  great 
and  manifold  for  complete  enclosure. 

"But  can  we  have  the  experience  of  such  a 
reality  and  not  have  an  idea  to  embody  the 
experience?"  Surely  not.  The  intellect,  or  in- 
terpretative faculty,  is  essential  to  our  inner 
life.  Idea  is  related  to  experience  as  the  body 
is  related  to  the  spirit.  They  cannot  be  sev- 
ered. And  yet  the  experience  underlies  the 
idea  and  is  greater  than  it,  just  as  the  soul  or 
personality  undergirds  and  is  greater  than  the 
body.  Moreover,  the  harmony  is  often  imper- 
fect. The  idea  often  thwarts  and  misrepresents 
the  experience,  as  the  body  does  the  soul. 
Sometimes  the  idea  burgeons  and  dilates  while 
experience  fades  and  pales.  Sometimes  it  re- 
mains when  the  experience  has  fled — a  corpse 
that  mocks  at  reality  and  cries  to  heaven  for 
either  revitalization  or  burial. 

It  should  be  our  constant  care  and  duty  to 
keep  experience  and  idea  in  the  closest  possible 
accord;  for  they  react  upon  each  other.  He 


18        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

who  flouts  or  ignores  ideas  in  the  interest  of 
experiences  makes  as  disastrous  a  blunder  as 
he  who  flouts  experiences  in  the  interest  of 
ideas. 

Ill 

This  deeply  rooted  human  experience,  or 
conviction,  of  Something  transcending  the 
world  of  sense  and  time  is  seen  upon  reflection 
to  be,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  not  merely 
Something  but  Someone.  In  other  words,  It 
cannot  be  less,  or  lower  than,  ourselves  in  na- 
ture and  worth,  else  It  would  cease  to  com- 
mand our  reverence  and  allegiance.  If  It  were 
only  blind  unconscious  Force,  however  mighty, 
It  would  be  only  another  Thing  or  Potency, 
like  Electricity,  capable  of  arousing  our  inter- 
est, but  not  of  stirring  that  deep  and  moving 
experience  of  which  we  have  been  speaking. 

This  means  no  less,  I  take  it,  than  that  in 
the  very  nature  of  this  experience  itself  is  in- 
volved that  its  Object  be  either  Personal,  using 
the  term  "personal"  in  its  broadest,  least  lim- 
ited sense,  or  Super-personal.  Whether  the 
Super-personal  is  not  a  contradiction  in  terms 
—the  Super-personal  being  the  super-possible 
—I  leave  for  you  to  cogitate.  For  my  part  I 
see  no  other  reasonable  conclusion  than  that 
this  Somewhat  experienced  is  Person — not  a 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE        19 

Person,  much  less  an  Individual,  but  Pure  Per- 
son— free  from  all  the  limitations  which  we 
find  in  ourselves  and  others  as  persons.  What 
such  Perfect  Personality  is,  and  how  such  Being 
is  related  to  ourselves  and  to  the  world,  in- 
volve problems  requiring  much  thinking- 
problems  which  are  stirred,  if  they  are  not 
settled,  in  the  theological  classroom. 

How  much  this  experience — or,  if  you  choose, 
this  faith — in  One  behind  the  veil  of  outer 
things  has  meant  to  humanity,  no  words  can 
adequately  describe.  By  it  men  have  "sub- 
dued kingdoms,  wrought  righteousness,  ob- 
tained promises,  stopped  the  mouths  of  lions, 
quenched  the  power  of  fire,  escaped  the  edge 
of  the  sword,  from  weakness  have  been  made 
strong."  Very  poignant  is  the  question:  Can 
men  keep  up  heart  if  they  cease  to  believe  in 
such  a  Being?  Can  they  go  on  singing,  striv- 
ing, enduring,  hoping,  when  "the  Great  Com- 
panion is  dead"?  Can  man  bear  the  strain  of 
life  without  God?  Will  not  his  spirit  be  crushed 
under  the  weight  of  nature's  ills?  Will  not  the 
light  of  joy  and  trust  die  out  of  his  heart? 
George  Romanes,  true  scientist,  true  man, 
voiced  the  natural  results  of  the  abandonment 
of  theism,  when,  in  his  revolt  from  Christianity 
in  1876,  he  wrote:  "And  now  in  conclusion,  I 
feel  it  is  desirable  to  state  that  any  antecedent 


20        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

bias  with  regard  to  theism  which  I  individually 
possess  is  unquestionably  on  the  side  of  tradi- 
tional beliefs.  It  is  therefore  with  the  utmost 
sorrow  that  I  find  myself  compelled  to  accept 
the  conclusions  here  worked  out,  and  nothing 
would  have  induced  me  to  publish  them,  save 
the  strength  of  my  conviction  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  every  member  of  society  to  give  his 
fellows  the  benefit  of  his  labors,  for  whatever 
they  may  be  worth.  ...  I  am  not  ashamed  to 
confess  that,  with  this  virtual  negation  of  God 
the  universe  to  me  has  lost  its  soul  of  loveli- 
ness, and  although  from  henceforth  the  precept 
to  'work  while  it  is  day*  will  doubtless  gain 
intensified  force  from  the  terribly  intensified 
meaning  of  the  words  that  'the  night  cometh 
when  no  man  can  work/  yet  when  at  times  I 
think,  as  think  I  must,  of  the  appalling  con- 
trast between  the  hallowed  glory  of  that  creed 
which  once  was  mine,  and  the  lonely  mystery 
of  existence  as  now  I  find  it — at  such  times  I 
shall  ever  feel  it  impossible  to  avoid  the  sharp- 
est pang  of  which  my  nature  is  capable."4 
Romanes'  recovery  of  his  faith,  which  he 
achieved  with  perfect  honesty  and  without  sur- 
rendering anything  of  the  scientific  spirit,  is 


«  A  Candid  Examination  of  Theism,  by  Physicus;  see  Romanes'  Thoughts 
on  Religion. 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE        21 

surely  one  of  the  significant  incidents  in  the 
history  of  modern  science. 

Yet,  reassuring  as  the  experience  of  God 
may  be,  we  cannot  be  true  to  ourselves  and 
cherish  it  at  the  expense  of  our  mental  and 
moral  integrity.  As  has  been  well  said:  "No 
one  wants  to  be  a  fool,  even  a  blessed  fool." 
I  cannot  agree  with  Professor  James  that  we 
are  justified  in  creating  a  God  in  order  to  meet 
our  own  needs  and  longings.  That  would  mean 
to  undermine  the  very  foundations  of  the  moral 
order  and  threaten  to  bring  the  whole  social 
structure  down  about  our  ears.  Unless  this 
consciousness  of  God  can  be  justified  to  our 
intelligence  we  cannot  continue  to  hold  it  with 
either  self-respect  or  abiding  advantage. 

That  it  can  be  so  justified  I  think  has  been 
demonstrated  throughout  the  history  of  Theism. 
In  our  own  time  none  perhaps  has  done  it  with 
more  of  acumen  and  conclusiveness  than  Pro- 
fessor Howison.5  And  yet  for  myself  I  must 
confess  that  it  is  the  experience  and  not  the 
proof  that  is  primary  and  basal  and  that  with- 
out the  experience  the  proof  would  be  of  little 
avail.  Not  that  the  experience  is  itself  irra- 
tional or  nonrational.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 


8  See  The  Limits  of  Evolution;  also  The  Contribution  of  Professor  Howison 
to  Religious  Thought  (J.  W.  Buckham),  The  Harvard  Theological  Review. 


22       RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

of  the  very  essence  of  that  personal,  intuitive 
reason  which  furnishes  the  premises  of  all  rea- 
soning. Given  this  substantial  datum  of  expe- 
rience, of  the  same  order  as  our  consciousness 
of  self  and  of  others,  the  intellect,  or  discursive 
reason,  has  its  part  to  play  in  interpreting, 
defending,  and  relating  it  to  the  rest  of  our 
knowledge.  Yet  the  fundamental  reliance  is 
the  experiential.  And  so  I  ask  you  to  return 
once  more  to  this  experience  of  Something  or 
Someone  There  and  to  consider  with  me  the 
chief  objections  to  its  validity.  For  we  cannot 
contentedly  and  securely  maintain  it  so  long  as 
there  are  unanswered  objections  prodding  us  at 
every  step. 

IV 

There  are  three  possible  objections  that  may 
be  raised  against  the  validity  of  this  experience 
of  God:  first,  that  it  is  an  illusion;  second,  that 
it  is  merely  subjective;  and,  third,  that  it  is  a 
misconception.  Let  us  take  these  up  in  turn. 

1.  If  this  is  an  illusion,  there  are  three  things 
that  may  be  said  of  it:  first,  that  it  is  a  singularly 
persistent  illusion — other  illusions  give  way, 
this  one  perdures  through  the  generations;  sec- 
ond, that  it  is  a  singularly  well-fortified  illusion 
— capable,  as  has  been  said,  of  the  most  thor- 
ough and  convincing  rational  explication  and 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE        23 

defense — and  third  that  it  is  a  very  widespread 
illusion,  common  to  all  races  and  peoples. 

But  though  the  experience  is  so  widespread 
it  must  be  admitted  that  many  nevertheless  do 
not  have  it.  Why  is  this?  Let  us  pause  to 
consider  this  question  a  little  before  passing  on 
to  the  other  objections. 

If  one  man  says,  "To  me  this  Presence  is 
real,"  and  another  says,  "To  me  it  is  not," 
how  shall  we  decide  between  them?  It  is  easy 
to  call  the  consciousness  of  God  "temperamen- 
tal" and  so  dispose  of  it  with  the  arrow  of  an 
adjective.  But  the  arrow  is  too  light.  Apply 
to  the  God-consciousness  some  fair  tests.  Can 
one  come  up  to  this  experience  again  and  again, 
for  example,  and  find  it  real?  Can  other  expe- 
riences be  made  to  harmonize  with  it?  If  both 
these  tests  can  be  met,  then  comes  the  farther 
one:  Can  this  man  who  says  he  hasn't  it,  have 
it?  Has  he  it  already,  perhaps,  in  a  form  and 
degree  different  from  the  first?  If  not,  which, 
if  either,  is  abnormal?  If  God's  presence  is  real 
to  a  large  proportion  of  mankind  and  unreal 
to  the  rest,  is  the  fact  that  he  is  unreal  to  a 
part  proof  that  he  is  unreality?  Is  not  the 
positive  experience  better  evidence  than  the 
negative?  Was  Plotinus  right  when  he  said, 
"The  One  is  not  far  away  from  anyone,  and 
yet  is  liable  to  be  far  away  from  one  and  all, 


24        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

since,  present  though  It  be,  It  is  present  only 
to  such  as  are  capable  of  receiving  It,  and  are 
so  disposed  as  to  adapt  themselves  to  It,  and, 
as  it  were,  to  seize  and  touch  It  by  their  like- 
ness to  It?"6 

It  must  be  acknowledged  that  temperament 
plays  a  considerable  part  in  realizing  the  pres- 
ence of  God.  The  mystical  temperament  con- 
stitutes a  marked  human  type,  although  not 
every  one  who  has  such  a  temperament  has  the 
beatific  vision.  To  possess  such  a  temperament 
undoubtedly  makes  it  easier  to  realize  vividly 
the  reality  and  nearness  of  God,  but  it  is  hardly 
the  condition  of  such  an  experience.  If  it  were, 
religion  would  be  an  esoteric  cult  and  not  the 
broad  human  experience  that  it  is.  Jesus  did 
not  say,  "Blessed  are  they  that  have  a  religious 
temperament,  for  they  shall  see  God."  Let  it 
be  noted  that  differences  in  temperament,  real 
as  they  are,  are  liable  to  exaggeration.  Quali- 
ties and  characteristics  which  are  very  marked 
in  some  individuals  appear  to  be  wholly  lacking 
in  others;  but  the  lack  may  be  in  development, 
not  in  possession.  Every  individual  has  latent,^ 
undeveloped  capacities  of  which  he  hardly 
dreams  until  some  unwonted  experience  calls 
them  out.  To  quote  again  Von  Hiigel:  "In 

•  Enneads,  vi,  is,  4;  quoted  by  Baron  Von  Hiigel  in  The  Mystical  Ele- 
ment of  Religion,  ii,  p.  92. 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE        25 

even  the  most  purely  contingent-seeming  soul, 
and  in  its  apparently  but  institutional  and  his- 
torical assents  and  acts,  there  ever  is,  there 
never  can  fail  to  be,  some,  however  implicit, 
however  slight,  however  intermittent,  sense 
and  experience  of  the  Infinite."7 

There  is  a  fundamental  like-mindedness  of 
men  which  underlies  all  differences  as  the  bed- 
rock underlies  the  varied  soils,  with  their  differ- 
ing flowers  and  fruits.  It  is  upon  our  like- 
mindedness  far  more  than  upon  our  differences 
that  human  society  is  founded.  It  is  to  this 
like-mindedness  that  the  best  literature,  the 
noblest  art,  the  soundest  ethics,  the  deepest 
religion  makes  its  appeal.  There  may  be  here 
and  there  an  individual  who  does  not  respond 
to  Hamlet,  or  the  Sistine  Madonna,  or  the 
Hallelujah  Chorus,  or  the  Golden  Rule,  or 
the  twenty-third  psalm;  but  if  so,  we  count 
him  either  an  undeveloped  or  an  abnormal 
human. 

Wide,  confusing,  baffling,  as  are  the  differ- 
ences among  men,  in  preference,  in  judgment, 
in  belief,  in  everything,  their  agreements  far  ex- 
ceed their  divergencies.  The  life  of  humanity 
often  seems  but  a  seething  sea  of  contrary  winds 
and  conflicting  waves,  but  underneath  all  this 

1  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  ii,  p.  283. 


26        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

surface  disturbance  are  the  untroubled  deeps 
where  great  controlling,  steadying  convictions 
hold  sway.  And  one  of  the  deepest  of  these  is 
the  abiding  assurance  of  God. 

There  is  probably  something  of  the  mystic  in 
everyone.  Many  a  person  who  has  thought 
himself  a  mere  commonsense,  everyday  "tough- 
minded"  practicalist  has  awakened  one  day  to 
find  himself  strangely  "tender-minded,"  to  feel 
deep  calling  unto  deep  within  him,  a  great  wave 
of  emotion  overwhelming  him,  the  breaking  in 
upon  him  of  a  new  light,  or,  as  it  has  been  put, 
the  sudden  opening  of  an  unsuspected  chamber 
in  his  soul.  There  are  in  all  of  us  capacities 
that  we  have  not  fathomed.  To  deny  to  any- 
one the  possibility  of  some  form  of  mystical 
experience  is  unwarranted  dogmatism.  There 
is  reason  to  assume  that  every  man,  speaking 
broadly,  has  enough  of  the  mystical  in  him  to 
realize  the  presence  of  God  experientially.  In 
that  stirring  passage  in  which  Tertullian,  who 
certainly  could  not  be  called  an  irrational  mys- 
tic, calls  upon  the  soul  of  man,  "simple  and 
rude,  uncultured  and  untaught,"  to  stand  forth 
and  declare  itself  concerning  its  experience  of 
God,  he  declares,  "Whenever  the  soul  comes  to 
itself  as  out  of  a  surfeit,  or  a  sleep,  or  a  sickness, 
and  attains  something  of  its  natural  soundness, 
it  speaks  of  God,"  and  adds,  "There  is  not  a 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE        27 

soul  of  man  that  does  not  from  the  light  that 
is  in  itself  .  .  .  proclaim  God."8 

Yet  still  the  "tough-minded"  man  is  repelled. 
He  feels  compelled  in  honesty  to  say  that  this 
sense  of  the  Presence  of  God  seems  to  him  an 
unreal,  vapid,  pathological  experience.  He 
neither  has  had  it,  nor  expects  to  have  it,  nor 
cares  to  have  it.  It  seems  to  him  wholly  out  of 
place  and  useless  in  this  rough,  hard,  work-a- 
day  world.  And  his  protest  is  worth  attending 
to,  for  he  too  may  be  a  son  of  Abraham.  Let 
him  ask  himself,  however,  why  he  has  such  a 
sense  of  the  sacredness  of  Duty?  Is  there  not  at 
the  bottom  of  it  a  consciousness  that  in  some 
way  duty  is  linked  with  a  God  of  duty? 

2.  As  for  the  objection  that  the  experience 
of  God  is  subjective  and  by  no  means  certifies 
any  objective  existence,  it  is  true  if  "objective" 
is  used  in  the  literal  sense.  God  is  not  an  Ob- 
ject, but  an  Other,  a  personal  Other.  If  it  is 
meant  to  deny  that  there  is  such  an  Other  cor- 
responding to  our  personal  prescience  of  Him, 
then  the  denial  cuts  through  all  our  knowledge 
of  the  existence  of  persons.  There  can  be  no 
objective  proof  of  the  existence  of  a  self.  How 
can  one  know  that  he  himself  exists?  Only  by 
personal  consciousness.  How  can  he  know  that 

*  De  Testimonio  Animae,  chap,  i;  see  R.  M.  Jones'  Studies  in  Mystical 
Religion,  p.  82. 


28        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

other  persons  exist?  By  personal  recognition. 
How  can  he  know  that  God  exists?  Again,  by 
personal  knowledge.  If  this  is  subjective  knowl- 
edge, then  all  knowledge  of  persons  is  subjec- 
tive. Yet  it  is  the  most  real  of  all  knowledge. 
Well  did  Descartes  start  with  the  existence  of 
himself,  as  the  only  thing  he  could  not  doubt. 
Not  blindly  did  he  pass  to  the  existence  of  God 
as  the  next  most  certain  truth.  And  thence  to 
the  existence  of  other  persons.  And  yet,  as 
we  have  now  come  to  recognize,  the  existence 
both  of  other  selves  and  of  God  was  bound  up 
in  that  primary  truth  of  his  own  existence. 

3.  But  suppose  it  be  said,  "Yes,  this  expe- 
rience is  real;  there  is,  indeed,  Something  there; 
but  what  it  really  is  is  either  the  universe,  the 
sense  of  the  whole  of  things,  or  the  totality  of 
persons,  or  both,  which  gets  itself  before  the 
mind  as  if  it  were  some  distinct  and  superior 
personal  Reality." 

What  shall  we  say  to  this  ever-recurrent  and 
now  so  prevalent  view?  I  can  only  offer  here, 
and  very  briefly,  these  criticisms  of  it.  First, 
it  falsifies  the  plain  implicates  of  consciousness, 
if  it  does  not  actually  falsify  consciousness  it- 
self. If,  when  one  experiences,  or  believes  he 
experiences,  a  Being  self -existent  and  perfect, 
he  is  really  experiencing  a  vast  unconscious  uni- 
verse, or  a  company  of  selves  like  himself — 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE        29 

what  confidence  can  be  placed  in  the  testimony 
of  consciousness?  A  similar  case  might  be 
made  out  regarding  friendship.  It  might  be 
said:  The  person  whom  you  regard  as  your 
friend  is  not  a  self  at  all,  but  only  an  exudation 
of  the  universe.  You  are  not  loving  a  person 
at  all,  but  a  phenomenon,  not  a  reality,  but  an 
appearance.  What  would  be  the  best  way  to 
answer  such  an  assertion?  Would  it  not  be  by 
the  expressive  word  which  Professor  James 
uses  so  aptly,  "Bosh!"? 

Not  only  does  this  assumption  affront  the 
integrity  of  experience;  it  fails,  in  the  second 
place,  to  satisfy  the  needs  and  longings  of  the 
soul.  In  place  of  bread  it  offers  a  stone.  I 
will  not  repeat  here  the  overpressed  but  not 
inapt  argument  that  the  existence  of  a  need 
assures  its  fulfillment,  and  that  therefore  there 
must  be  a  God  to  correspond  to  our  need;  but 
I  will  suggest  that  the  presence  of  moral  recti- 
tude and  sympathy  hi  ourselves  points,  at 
least,  toward  a  Fontal  Rectitude  and  Sympathy 
from  whom  it  issues. 

The  final  criticism  that  I  have  to  offer  of  this 
monistic  interpretation  of  the  God-experience  is 
that  it  raises  more  problems  than  it  lays.  For 
example,  how  could  a  material  universe,  in- 
ferior in  nature  to  the  perceiving  person,  get 
itself  transformed  in  his  consciousness  into  a 


30        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

spiritual  Self  superior  to  himself?  Or  how  could 
the  aggregate  of  imperfect  persons  get  itself 
incorporated  in  consciousness  as  a  Unitary, 
Self -existent,  All-perfect  Person? 

Thus  we  come,  not  without  good  reason,  to 
trust  the  God-experience  as  meaning  essen- 
tially what  it  seems  to  mean.  That  so  many 
have  found  it  to  work  is  not  a  proof  of  its 
reality,  but  a  strong  indication  of  it. 

Not  that  there  are  not  immense  and  ubiqui- 
tous difficulties  in  clothing  this  experience  in 
adequate  and  comprehensive  ideas,  in  relating 
it  to  this  "too,  too  solid  flesh"  and  this  often 
unintelligible  world;  but  the  difficulties  are  no 
greater  than  in  making  any  hypothesis  you  may 
adopt  fit  this  rebellious,  recalcitrant  frame  of 
things  with  its  obstinate  encounters  and  its 
ever-escaping  margins.  Evidently,  we  were  not 
intended  to  have  an  easy  time  of  it  here,  either 
in  our  living  or  our  thinking.  Perhaps  it  is 
best  so.  Otherwise  what  use  would  there  be 
for  philosophy,  say  nothing  of  religion? 

Into  the  question  of  whether  this  God- 
experience  is  individual  or  social  I  cannot  here 
enter  farther  than  to  say  that  if  it  is,  as  I  have 
treated  it,  individual,  that  by  no  means  pre- 
vents its  being  social  also.  For  individual  and 
social  are  not — as  we  are  coming  to  see — 
exclusive,  but  complementary. 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE        31 

, 
This  deep  down,  ineradicable  experience  of 

God,  too  deep  to  be  fully  understood,  yet 
capable  of  convincing  rational  explication  and 
defense,  is  the  central  factor  in  religion.  Not 
that  this  is  all  of  religion.  From  this  root  reli- 
gion spreads  far  and  wide,  flowers  and  fruits  abun- 
dantly and  makes  all  the  areas  of  our  human 
life  comely  and  glad.  Religion  thus  becomes, 
as  Professor  Hocking  has  called  it,  "the  re- 
sidual inspiration  of  human  life."  By  its  effects 
we  know  it.  It  incites  the  arts  and  mothers 
the  enthusiasms.  It  appears  in  moral  charac- 
ter as  "anticipated  attainment."  It  refreshes, 
sustains,  ennobles  the  soul.  But  beneath  all  its 
activities  and  manifestations  lies  this  elemental 
experience  of  God,  not  always  distinct,  but  be- 
coming clearer  and  clearer  through  the  double 
dialectic  of  life  and  thought  until  one  finds  in 
him  the  Person  of  persons. 

It  is  a  great  thing  for  religion,  as  well  as  for 
the  philosophy  of  religion,  that  there  has  come 
to  us  in  these  days  of  alternate  confusion  and 
clarification  the  full  purport  of  this  distinction 
between  the  experience  of  God  and  the  idea  or 
doctrine  of  God.  Too  long  have  ideas  and  doc- 
trines of  God  been  substituted  for  God  himself. 
Hence  have  arisen  skepticism,  revolt,  agnosticism, 
atheism,  all  of  which  have  often  been  rejection 
of  ideas  of  God  rather  than  of  God  himself. 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE1 

THE  appeal  to  experience  as  the  justification 
of  religion  is  so  strong  that  it  might  well  be 
stronger.  Its  full  strength  cannot  be  revealed 
until  it  is  subjected  to  the  most  thorough  and 
critical  examination.  After  the  question:  What 
is  religious  experience  and  how  is  it  related  to 
experience  in  general?  comes  the  question: 
What  is  Christian  experience  and  how  is  it 
related  to  racial  religious  experience?  Until 
such  questions  as  these  are  asked  and  an- 
swered many  minds  will  refuse  consent  to  a 
faith  which  comes  to  them  clad  only  in  its  own 
native  power,  but  without  philosophic  creden- 
tials. Only  by  a  thorough  critique  of  Christian 
experience  can  the  convincing  character  of  the 
claims  of  Christianity  be  disclosed. 

I 

The  term  "experience"  is  very  loosely  used 
to  cover  physical  sensation,  mental  activity, 
and  spiritual  knowledge.  We  speak  of  ex- 
periencing bodily  pleasure  or  pain,  as  if  it  were 
our  very  selves  who  were  pleased  by  a  taste  or 
hurt  by  a  blow.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  we 

>  From  The  Constructive  Quarterly,  vol.  v,  No.  2,  June,  1917. 
32 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE          33 

know  that  it  is  our  body  that  is  affected  rather 
than  ourselves.  Similarly,  we  speak  with  much 
more  of  a  sense  of  closeness  of  identification — 
though  it  is  noteworthy  that  here  we  do  not 
customarily  use  the  term  "experience" — of  un- 
derstanding a  mental  proposition,  as  if  we  our- 
selves as  personal  intelligences  recognized  it  as 
true  (for  example,  a  geometrical  demonstra- 
tion). Yet  here  again,  upon  more  careful 
thought,  we  realize  that  it  is  the  mind  rather 
than  the  innermost  self  that  is  involved  in  such 
knowledge.  For  our  reasoning  faculties  are  in 
a  sense  only  instrumental  to  our  deeper  self,  as 
is  implied  in  the  familiar  lines, 

"A  man  convinced  against  his  will 
Is  of  the  same  opinion  still." 

In  religious  experience,  however,  it  is  clear 
that  the  very  self  is  involved  far  more  com- 
pletely and  unreservedly  than  in  either  physi- 
cal sensation  or  mental  judgment.  There  is  an 
authoritativeness,  a  sense  of  reality  and  of 
conscious  self-commitment  in  religious  expe- 
rience which  give  to  it  a  singularly  central  and 
sacred  place  in  human  life.  Its  intensity  may 
be  transitory,  but  it  leaves  a  vivid  impress  of 
abiding  reality. 

This  is  true  of  religious  experience  wherever 
it  is  found,  hi  a  lesser  degree  in  its  lower  and 


34        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

more  primitive  forms,  in  a  higher  degree  in  its 
higher  forms.  Whatever  its  cause,  there  is  a 
certain  commanding  and  serious  quality  in  re- 
ligion, when  it  is  genuine,  which  sets  it  apart 
from  all  other  forms  of  experience  as  pos- 
sessed of  greater  significance. 

It  must  be  granted  that  in  some  cases  there 
is  a  revulsion  from  the  intense  consciousness  of 
assurance  of  religious  experience  toward  what 
sometimes  comes  to  seem  the  more  solid  though 
skeptical  reality  of  reason;  but  in  such  cases 
there  is  almost  invariably  a  sense  of  loss,  as  if 
one  had  been  compelled  to  drop  to  a  lower 
level  to  gain  reality.  And  often  there  remains 
a  lurking  conviction  that  reality  may  lie,  after 
all,  in  the  more  ideal  realm. 

II 

When  we  seek  for  the  inner  essence  of  reli- 
gious experience  we  find  ourselves  confronted 
with  such  a  multiplicity  of  beliefs,  practices,  and 
emotions  that  it  seems  hopeless  to  fasten  upon 
any  one  as  definitive.  And  yet  when  one  goes 
below  all  these  to  their  root  one  comes  upon 
something,  as  we  have  seen,  which,  however 
elusive,  however  overlaid  with  corruptions,  un- 
derlies all  religion.  It  is  what  we  call  spirit, 
the  supernatural,  the  divine.  In  its  lower 
forms  only  a  vague  indefinite  mana,  in  its 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE          35 

higher  it  rises  into  something  worthy  of  the 
name  of  God.  Something  or  Someone  (either 
one  or  many)  beside  oneself  and  other  creatures 
and  objects — that  is  the  consciousness  that 
haunts  the  human  mind  and  gives  rise  to  what 
we  term  religion. 

It  is  possible  to  explain  this  consciousness  of 
a  spiritual  world  as  imaginary,  marginal,  unre- 
liable. Certainly  it  is  mystical  in  its  nature; 
but  its  power  over  human  life  and  its  persist- 
ence do  not  readily  admit  of  this  explanation. 
It  does  not  fade  away  as  racial  intelligence 
grows,  but  develops  in  strength  and  sanity.  It 
not  only  allies  itself  to,  but  stimulates,  a  ra- 
tional interpretation  of  the  universe.  The 
conviction  arises  that  this  religious  experience 
is  in  itself  rational,  possessing  a  kind  of  ele- 
mental self-evidencing  rationality  that  sur- 
passes the  bounds  of  ordinary  reasoning.  The 
basis  of  this  conviction  cannot  here  be  ex- 
amined. Suffice  to  say  that,  as  intuitionism, 
it  has  strong  support  in  the  history  of  human 
thought.2 

In  the  greater  ethnic  faiths  this  experience 
becomes  theistic,  ethical,  spiritual.  In  Chris- 
tianity it  attains  its  purest  and  most  vital 
form.  Its  manifest  superiority  has  led  us  to 

2  For  a  further  discussion  of  this  subject  see  my  Mysticism  and  Modern 
Life,  chap.  v. 


36        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

look  upon  Christian  experience  as  something 
quite  by  itself,  original,  new,  unrelated;  but  a 
larger  outlook  convinces  the  student  of  reli- 
gion that  Christian  experience,  unique  and  su- 
preme as  it  is,  is  not  something  apart  and  alone. 
Rather  is  Christianity  the  culmination  and  ful- 
fillment of  the  religious  experience  of  the  race, 
revealed,  to  be  sure,  but  as  the  climax  of  a  pro- 
gressive revelation. 

As  the  highest  form  of  the  racial  religious 
experience,  Christian  experience  has  a  definite 
character  and  content,  distinguishing  though 
not  separating  it  from  the  experiential  content 
of  other  religions.  Just  what  this  "essence"  of 
Christianity  is  has  been  the  object  of  diligent 
quest. 

Before  endeavoring  to  define  its  content  let 
us  not  fail  to  recognize  that  Christian  expe- 
rience itself  has  assumed  quite  different  forms 
in  various  stages  of  its  history.  The  Christians 
of  the  second  and  third  centuries,  emerging 
from  Judaism  or  paganism  and  standing  face  to 
face  with  martyrdom,  had  an  experience  differ- 
ing in  many  ways  from  that  of  the  Christian 
of  to-day.  So  with  the  Christians  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages,  living  in  a  well-nigh  spent  civilization, 
and  confronting  a  supposedly  imminent  end  of 
the  world.  The  Roman  Catholic  type  of  expe- 
rience exhibits  a  marked  contrast  to  the  Prot- 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE          37 

estant.  The  evangelical  and  the  liberal  types 
of  experience  differ.  It  is  hardly  just  to  assert 
that  one  of  these  is  right  and  all  the  rest  wrong. 
To  one  brought  up  under  the  sway  of  evan- 
gelicalism it  is  quite  natural  to  assume  that  his 
is  the  only  genuine  kind  of  experience;  but  he 
can  hardly  fail  to  recognize  that  the  evan- 
gelical type  is  undergoing  constant  alteration. 
One  kind  of  Christian  experience  may,  it  is 
true,  be  purer,  higher,  nearer  to  the  heart  of 
Christianity  than  others,  but  that  does  not 
prove  that  the  others  are  false  or  fruitless. 
Each  may  grasp  an  aspect  of  the  larger  expe- 
rience. 

Ill 

Is  there,  then,  a  common  Christian  experience 
which  underlies  and  unites  all  of  its  forms,  as 
one  ocean  fills  many  bays  and  inlets?  If  so, 
how  shall  we  discover  it?  Not  by  merely  going 
back  to  original  Christianity,  as  Harnack  would 
have  us  do;  nor  by  taking  it  as  a  whole,  in  all 
the  forms  and  phases  of  its  development;  nor 
by  fixing  upon  the  most  highly  developed  form 
and  making  that  the  criterion.  Rather,  by 
seeking  the  underlying  formative  content  com- 
mon to  all  types  of  Christian  experience  and  dis- 
entangling it  as  far  as  possible  from  the  subor- 
dinate and  temporal  factors  bound  up  with  it. 


38        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

Proceeding  thus,  we  find  that  the  common 
and  constitutive  root  of  Christian  experience  is 
the  bond  uniting  Christians  to  God  through 
Christ.  It  is  his  relation  to  Christ  that  makes 
the  Christian  a  Christian.3  It  is  true  that 
Christ  may  be  conceived  in  very  different 
ways.  To  one  Christian  the  historic  Jesus  may 
be  central;  to  another  the  conception  of  the  in- 
dwelling, living  Christ.  One  may  find  the 
lineaments  of  Christ  blend  and  lose  themselves 
in  those  of  the  Spirit,  or  the  heavenly  Father. 
To  another  they  may  be  confused  and  obscured 
in  that  of  the  Church.  Even  so,  these  expe- 
riences— varying  not  only  in  clarity  and  po- 
tency but  in  truth  and  worth — may  all  of  them, 
in  differing  degree,  be  infused  and  vitalized  by 
the  personality  of  Jesus  Christ.  In  other 
words,  the  Christian  experience  is  an  experience 
of  personal  relationship  to  a  personal  Spirit 
through  the  medium  of  an  incarnate  revela- 
tion, however  diversely  that  revelation  may  be 
mentally  represented. 

The  Christian  experience,  centering  thus  in 
Christ,  is  a  regenerative,  redemptive  experience. 
Whether  this  be  chiefly  through  a  sense  of  for- 
giveness of  sin  or  of  entrance  into  a  larger, 
freer  life,  or  both,  whether  it  be  sudden  or 

*  A  very  striking  and  beautiful  expression  of  this  truth  is  found  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Second  Epistle  of  Clement. 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE          39 

gradual,  is  secondary.  It  is  a  new  life.  The 
terms  in  which  this  new  life  is  represented 
differ  widely;  that  again  may  be  but  a  testi- 
mony to  its  reality.  It  is  true  that  this  renew- 
ing power  of  Christian  experience  has  often 
become  weakened  and  impoverished.  Ration- 
alistic and  naturalistic  tendencies  of  thought 
have  overshadowed  it.  Conventional  forms  of 
Christianity  have  at  times  reduced  it  to  a  mere 
sense  of  secured  safety.  Nevertheless,  through 
the  whole  stream  of  Christian  experience  runs 
this  sense  of  a  life  renewed — a  life  imparted  by 
Love,  at  cost  of  the  sacrificial  suffering  which 
love  entails  when  sin  has  intervened. 

Once  more,  the  Christian  experience  is  an 
idealizing,  prophetic  experience.  It  is  charac- 
terized by  the  active  pursuit  of  an  ideal,  indi- 
vidual and  social.  It  is  ever  looking  toward  a 
goal.  Something  better  on  before,  toward 
which  men  are  to  press,  that  is  part  of  Chris- 
tian experience.  It  is  thus  not  only  individual 
but  social  in  its  nature. 

Here,  again,  there  has  been  enormous  di- 
versity of  ideas  and  programs.  Heavenly 
homes,  New  Jerusalems,  imminent  millen- 
niums, new  social  orders  to  be  won  by  labors 
together  with  God — all  imaginable  forms  of 
the  kingdom  of  God — yet  ever  a  kingdom,  of 
one  sort  or  another.  For  this  is  part  of  the 


40        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

normal  Christian  experience;  it  looks  for  a 
better  self  and  a  better  city.  It  is  true  that 
there  have  been  periods  in  Christian  life  and 
thought  when  this  spirit  has  been  languid, 
when  an  alien  temper  of  pessimism  and  stag- 
nation has  gained  the  ascendency.  But  a 
faith,  as  an  individual,  should  be  judged 
neither  by  its  lapses  nor  its  self-contradictions, 
but  by  its  ruling  temper  and  spirit. 

It  is  needless  to  add  that  genuine  Christian 
experience  is  a  profoundly  and  vitally  ethical 
experience.  Otherwise  it  would  have  had  no 
stable  and  enduring  quality. 

Christian  experience,  then — if  one  may  at- 
tempt to  define  what  is  too  rich  for  definition 
— is  an  individually  enlightening  and  regenera- 
tive, ethically  purifying,  socially  redemptive  ex- 
perience of  God  through  the  historical-spiritual 
person  Jesus  Christ.  It  is  thus  both  the  in- 
terpretation and  the  fulfillment  of  racial  reli- 
gious experience. 

IV 

Compare  this  conception  of  Christian  expe- 
rience with  older  and  more  limited  versions  of 
it. 

The  common  Protestant  conception  of  the 
content  of  Christian  experience  goes  back  for 
its  sanction  into  the  beginnings  of  the  evan- 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE         41 

gelical  movement.  Its  prevalence  is  probably 
due  more  to  John  Wesley  than  to  any  other 
single  individual.  The  strength  of  Wesley  an- 
ism  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  sees  Christianity  to 
be  an  experience,  not  chiefly  a  belief  or  cult. 
The  two  essential  elements  of  this  experience 
are  conceived  to  be  conversion  and  sanctifica- 
tion.  That  which  gives  impulse  and  activity 
to  both  of  these  is  the  "testimony  of  the 
Spirit."  The  testimony  of  the  Spirit  is  defined 
by  Wesley  as  "an  immediate  impression  on  the 
soul,  whereby  the  Spirit  of  God  directly  wit- 
nesses to  my  spirit  that  I  am  a  child  of  God, 
that  Jesus  Christ  has  loved  me  and  given  him- 
self for  me,  and  that  all  my  sins  are  blotted 
out,  and  I,  even  I,  am  reconciled  to  God." 

That  is  an  admirable  statement  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith,  but  consider  for  a  moment  how 
much  it  presupposes.  First,  that  there  is  a 
God  and  that  there  is  a  soul — both  of  which, 
to  the  inquiring  mind,  are  open  to  question 
and  must  be  proved.  It  presupposes  also  a 
historic-spiritual  person,  Jesus  Christ,  who  is 
of  so  exceptional  a  nature  that  he  can  know 
and  love  in  all  the  ages  each  individual  who 
turns  to  him.  Then,  too,  it  involves  the  real- 
ity of  sin,  that  sin  has  power  to  alienate  the 
soul  from  God,  and  that  this  alienation  may 
be  removed  through  the  mediation  of  Christ. 


42        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

All  this,  Wesley  would  say,  is  a  matter  of 
experience  and  rests  upon  the  experimental 
basis.  In  the  main  this  is  true.  Yet  expe- 
rience cannot  establish  historical  fact,  though 
it  may  witness  to  it.  Nor  can  it  of  itself  alone 
establish  the  doctrines  here  involved.  The  ex- 
perience which  Wesley  calls  "the  testimony  of 
the  Spirit"  is,  evidently,  not  the  simple,  iso- 
lated and  self-supported  fact  which  he  assumes 
it  to  be.  Historical  and  intellectual  factors  are 
involved  in  it.  It  does  not  come  to  the  Chris- 
tian as  a  solitary  individual.  It  is  mediated  by 
the  Christian  Community.  It  roots  deep  down 
in  the  primary  religious  impulse  of  the  race. 
It  is  attached  to  a  definite  historic  religion, 
which  itself  is  closely  related  to  an  anterior 
faith,  and  that  again  to  a  great  family  of  reli- 
gions. 

Moreover,  the  Wesleyan  is  only  one — 
though  one  of  the  purest  and  most  vital — of 
the  types  of  Christian  experience.  The  author 
of  the  Epistle  of  James  did  not  define  his  ex- 
perience in  such  terms;  neither  did  Justin 
Martyr,  nor  Ignatius,  nor  Augustine,  nor  Saint 
Francis,  nor  Theresa,  nor  Luther,  nor  Calvin. 
Yet  they  all  represent  genuine  varieties  of 
Christian  experience  and  all  shared  much  that 
Wesley  experienced  and  he  much  that  each  of 
them  experienced.  All  of  which  clearly  con- 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE          43 

firms  the  two  truths  we  have  already  reached, 
(1)  that  Christian  experience  is  far  more  in- 
clusive and  varied  than  we  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  regard  it,  and  (2)  that  its  forms  and 
effects  are  largely  molded  by  ideas  or  doctrines. 

What,  then,  is  the  relation  of  ideas  to  expe- 
rience in  the  realm  of  Christian  faith?  Do  the 
ideas  beget  the  experience  or  the  experience 
the  ideas?  We  have  already  taken  the  ground 
that  the  experience  is  primary  and  the  ideas, 
or  doctrines,  secondary.  This  is  further  indi- 
cated by  these  two  patent  facts.  First,  Chris- 
tian experience  is  manifestly  far  deeper  and 
worthier  than  its  doctrinal  statement.4  To  say 
this  is  not  to  reflect  upon  the  doctrines,  but  to 
magnify  the  experience.  The  doctrines  are  es- 
sential and  valuable  interpretations  of  the  ex- 
perience, but  they  are  inferior  to  it,  as  words 
are  less  than  thoughts.  Nor  is  it  to  exalt 
emotion.  For  to  define  experience  as  emotion 
is  no  more  adequate  than  to  define  it  as  idea. 
Idea  and  emotion  invariably  attend  experience 
—perhaps  we  should  say  are  parts  of  it — but 
it  is  greater  and  deeper  than  they. 

Again,  not  only  is  the  Christian  experience 
greater  and  deeper  than  Christian  doctrine,  but 


4  "Christianity  is  based  upon  recorded  experiences,  which  are  eternally 
self -verifiable  in  the  soul  of  the  man  who  puts  them  to  the  test." — Profes- 
sor B.  W.  Bacon,  at  the  Modern  Churchmen's  Conference,  England,  1920. 


44        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

often  the  doctrines,  especially  as  formulated  by 
individuals,  are  plainly  out  of  accord  with  the 
experience.  How  often  we  meet  with  Chris- 
tians of  an  intense  and  profound  experience, 
eager  to  present  theories  which  (perhaps  owing 
to  a  lack  of  intellectual  training)  are  painfully 
short  of  or  even  contradictory  to  the  expe- 
rience which  we  can  detect  burning  warm  and 
true  beneath  the  smoke  which  issues  from  it. 
Their  ideas  fail  to  represent  their  experience, 
and  not  seldom  misrepresent  it.  The  failure  to 
recognize  this  discrepancy  between  idea  and 
experience,  doctrine  and  truth,  has  led  to  end- 
less confusion  and  misunderstanding. 

Once  more  Christian  doctrines  change  more 
or  less  with  changing  social  and  intellectual 
environment.  They  cannot  be  detached  from 
the  total  life  and  thought  of  the  age.5  Expe- 
rience changes  too.  Only,  the  latter  has  a  far 
deeper  continuity  from  age  to  age.  The  like- 
mindedness  of  men  in  all  ages  is  a  fact,  in  spite 
of  their  differences,  but  their  like-heartedness  is 
a  still  greater  fact.  Paul's  doctrines,  for  ex- 
ample, appeal  to  us  still,  as  embodying  univer- 
sal truths,  however  changed  our  environment; 
but  Paul's  experience  is  far  nearer  and  dearer 
to  us  than  are  his  doctrines. 


6  Compare  Francis  J.  McConnell,  Public  Opinion  and  Theology- 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE          45 

V 

Experience  first,  doctrines  second.  That  is 
the  natural  order.  Only,  there  is  no  interval 
between;  for  as  soon  as  experience  begins, 
thinking  begins,  just  as  the  shoot  springs  from 
the  swelling  seed.  Christ  first,  then  Christ- 
ology;  the  new  birth,  then  a  doctrine  of  re- 
generation; the  consciousness  of  forgiveness, 
then  a  doctrine  of  atonement;  progress  in  holi- 
ness, then  a  doctrine  of  sanctification. 

Yet  doctrine,  once  formed,  begins  to  color — 
shall  we  not  say  also  to  arouse? — experience. 
When  a  church  has  once  become  established 
doctrinal  instruction  begins  as  early  as,  some- 
times even  earlier  than,  the  experience.  In 
this  way  have  come  into  existence  types  of 
Christian  experience  so  wedded  to  certain  doc- 
trinal presuppositions — as,  for  example,  Roman 
Catholic,  Evangelical,  and  Liberal — and  thus 
wearing  so  different  aspects  that  they  have 
hardly  been  able  to  recognize  each  other  as 
Christian.  And  yet,  granted  the  presence,  in 
some  if  not  all  sects,  of  ideas  and  practices 
which  can  hardly  be  called  less  than  corrup- 
tions, there  is  in  each  a  residue  of  experience 
that  is  genuinely  Christian.  And  upon  the 
basis  of  this  common  experience,  and  the  com- 
mon body  of  doctrine  arising  from  it,  unity  is 
made  possible,  if  only  we  are  willing  to  go  be- 


46        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

neath  the  surface  to  the  experience  underlying 
it. 

The  effect  of  doctrine  upon  experience  is 
something  to  which  the  church  should  give 
careful  attention.  For  doctrine  may  exercise 
either  a  restrictive  and  devitalizing  or  a  re- 
leasing and  stimulating  influence  upon  expe- 
rience. Experience  should  have  room  to 
expand  and  create  new  doctrinal  forms  and 
expressions.  Otherwise,  it  either  ferments  or 
loses  its  vitality.  A  doctrine,  or  rather  a  doc- 
trinal formulation,  that  to  one  generation  is 
an  aid  to  experience  may  to  the  next  be  an 
encumbrance. 

For  example,  the  experience  of  sin  is  one  of 
the  permanent  factors  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness, essential  to  the  realization  and 
progress  of  the  religious  life.  As  such  it  is 
peculiarly  clear  and  poignant  in  Christianity — 
leading  to  certain  doctrines  which  in  evan- 
gelicalism have  been  extremely  potent  in 
arousing  Christian  experience,  for  example,  to 
the  doctrines  of  total  depravity  and  everlasting 
punishment.  Yet  both  of  these  doctrines  do 
violence  to  another  equally  fundamental  con- 
stituent of  religious  experience — the  conscious- 
ness on  the  part  of  humanity  of  an  honest 
endeavor  to  do  right  and  of  the  consequent 
approval  of  God.  Side  by  side  these  two  ap- 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE          47 

parently  hostile  constituents  of  the  religious 
experience — consciousness  of  worth  and  con- 
sciousness of  sin — have  dwelt  together  in  our 
humanity,  and  even  hi  the  same  breast.  To 
be  true  to  human  experience  both  of  them 
should  be  recognized.  The  theology  which 
recognized  human  sin  only,  and  ignored  human 
goodness,  for  a  long  time  held  sway  over  the 
larger  part  of  Protestantism,  and  wrought 
mightily,  because  it  was  true  to  one  hemisphere 
of  experience.  Yet  because  it  was  an  exag- 
geration, because  it  ignored  a  section  of  expe- 
rience which  should  not  have  been  ignored,  for 
this  among  other  causes  it  has  now  come  about 
that  the  doctrine  of  sin  has  lost  much  of  its 
hold  upon  our  generation  and  the  experience 
itself  has  been  blunted  by  reaction. 

Doctrine  must  be  constantly  squared  with 
experience,  or  such  results  are  sure  to  follow. 
The  place  of  logic  in  theology  must  be  subor- 
dinated to  the  deeper  realities  of  experience. 
Then  the  interplay  of  the  two  will  be  normal 
and  fruitful. 

Take  another  illustration.  The  doctrine  of 
Providence,  one  of  the  most  characteristic  yet 
difficult  doctrines  of  Christian  faith,  is  based 
upon  experience  of  providential  direction  in 
one's  own  and  in  the  general  life.  That  expe- 
rience has  led  to  a  doctrine  of  Providence 


48        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

which  attempts  an  indiscriminating  application 
of  the  experience  of  individual  divine  guidance 
to  the  whole  realm  of  humanity  and  nature. 
Hence  arise  insuperable  difficulties.  Obstinate 
facts  emerge  which  refuse  to  yield  to  an  easy 
and  roseate  doctrine  of  Providence.  As  a  con- 
sequence a  subtle  distrust  of  the  doctrine  dif- 
fuses itself.  The  scientist  raises  his  eyebrows; 
the  Christian  himself  begins  to  wonder  and 
doubt.  The  doctrinal  instinct  has  overreached 
itself  and  constructed  too  soaring  a  doctrine, 
one  which  falls  of  its  own  weight.  Thus  the 
doctrine  of  Providence  has,  especially  in  the 
light  of  the  Great  War,  come  to  seem  to  many 
a  fabric  of  fancy.  For  example,  a  soldier 
wrote  to  his  pastor  from  the  battlefield:  "This 
war  makes  one  hate  God  .  .  .  Omnipotent! 
and — he  let  it  happen.  Omniscient!  He  knew 
it  in  advance — and  he's  let  it  happen.  I  hate 
him  .  .  .  You  have  been  kinder  to  me  than 
God  has  been."  What  is  the  course  to  be 
taken?  Is  it  not  to  go  back  to  the  base-line  of 
experience  and  start  over  again,  asking,  "What 
is  this  experience?  What  does  it  involve  as  to 
the  relation  of  God  to  my  life  and  that  of 
others?" — and  then  to  study  the  facts  and  laws 
of  history  and  science,  as  well  as  of  experience, 
and  thus  to  build  up  a  doctrine  of  Providence 
which  is  true  both  to  experience  and  to  the 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE          49 

world  in  which  we  are  living?  The  result  may 
be  very  modest  and  incomplete,  but  it  will  at 
least  be  true  to  all  the  facts  involved. 

The  relation  of  religious  experience  to  cult  is 
another  subject  which  calls  for  more  careful 
study.  What  is  the  influence  of  ritual  in  arous- 
ing and  renewing  individual  experience?  How 
far  do  common  worship,  the  use  of  prayer  and 
praise,  rite  and  symbol,  arise  out  of  experience 
and  promote  it?  And  how  far  are  they  in  dan- 
ger of  becoming  substitutes  for  it?  Here  lies 
the  key  to  cult  as  well  as  to  doctrine. 

Thus  the  return  to  experience,  conceived  in 
an  ampler  way  than  heretofore,  as  the  source 
both  of  doctrine  and  cult,  brings  a  fresh  reve- 
lation of  the  fundamental  nature  of  all  religion, 
reveals  the  universality  of  Christianity  as  the 
interpretation  and  fulfillment  of  the  religious 
life  of  humanity,  and  throws  a  flood  of  light  on 
the  nature  and  function  of  theology.  Best  of 
all,  it  reveals  the  basis  and  hope  of  a  unified 
Christendom. 


EXPERIENTIAL  THEOLOGY1 

THOSE  who  dwell  close  to  the  banks  of 
theology  have  for  some  time  been  aware  of  a 
rising  flood.  There  is  a  warmer  atmosphere 
and  a  more  copious  flow  of  forceful  thought. 
The  war  may  have  checked  this  outflow;  it 
has  purified  and  refilled  its  sources.  It  is  not 
so  much  a  "reconstruction"  of  theology  that 
we  are  witnessing  as  a  rebirth — a  new  infusion 
of  life,  a  fresh  springtide.  The  theology  that  is 
now  manifesting  itself  is  newer  than  the  "New 
Theology"  and  older  than  the  "Old  Theology." 
It  is  a  theology  that  has  put  off  the  old  man 
with  his  deeds — dogmatism,  systemism,  specu- 
lation, controversialism — and  has  put  on  the 
new  man  that  after  God  has  been  created  in 
righteousness  and  holiness  of  truth. 

I 

The  chief  characteristic  of  this  regenerated 
theology  is  its  experiential  character.  It  is 
the  theology  of  Christian  experience.2  This 
means  an  almost  revolutionary  change.  Theol- 
ogy as  a  science  takes  its  place  as  secondary 

1  From  The  Methodist  Review  (Quarterly)  April,  1917. 

2  By  experience,  it  is  needless  to  repeat,  is  meant  not  empirical  experience, 
but  spiritual  experience,  in  which  the  rational  and  ethical  rather  than  the 
"feeling"  element  predominates. 

50 


EXPERIENTIAL  THEOLOGY        51 

and  subordinate  to  a  greater  reality.  It  has 
become  ancilla  religionis.  It  has  learned  that 
its  sphere  is  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to 
minister.  It  is  to  be  henceforth  the  interpreter 
and  servant  of  experience,  commissioned  not  to 
lead  but  to  follow,  not  to  corral  truth  but  to 
clarify  it.  "Theology  is  preceded  by  religion 
as  botany  by  the  life  of  plants,"  as  one  of  the 
foremost  to  recognize  and  promote  this  change 
has  said.3  Manifestly,  this  means  a  change  in 
the  whole  spirit  and  attitude  of  theology. 
Henceforth  she  must  take  her  pitcher  to  the 
living  well  and  draw  water  from  deeps  of  which 
she  has  not  hitherto  been  fully  aware.  Be- 
neath doctrines  lies  Truth;  beneath  under- 
standing, Experience;  beneath  interpretation, 
Reality. 

II 

To  base  theology  upon  experience  calls,  how- 
ever, for  a  conception  of  experience  far  wider  and 
deeper  than  that  which  is  ordinarily  held.  In 
many  respects  the  very  word  "experience"  is  mis- 
leading. It  is  apt  to  suggest  a  mere  superficial, 
passing  stimulus — something  that  has  to  do  with 
subjective  feeling  rather  than  with  objective  re- 
ality. Many  weak,  exaggerated,  and  irrational 
notions  of  religious  experience  have  attached 


« William  Newton  Clarke,  An  Outline  of  Christian  Theology,  p.  1. 


52        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

themselves  to  it  and  beclouded  its  true  nature. 
It  has  been  identified  solely  with  the  exotic  phe- 
nomena of  revivals.  Abnormal  forms  of  mys- 
ticism have  become  associated  with  it,  lending 
it  an  atmosphere  that  has  alienated  many  minds. 
Religious  experience  has  too  often  meant  only 
conventional  conversion  or  spasmodic  emotion. 
Only  of  late  have  unprejudiced  students  of 
religion  come  to  realize  that  these  manifesta- 
tions of  religious  experience  are  not  to  be  taken 
as  adequate  indices  of  its  true  character.  They 
are  but  outward  and  often  lurid  signs  and 
accompaniments  of  a  deeper  reality,  whose  un- 
derlying nature  is  something  that  neither  psy- 
chology nor  metaphysics  can  explain  or  explain 
away.  We  are  just  beginning  to  appreciate  the 
varied  and  comprehensive  wealth  of  religious 
experience.  Leibnitz  had  a  religious  experience 
as  well  as  Luther,  Wordsworth  as  well  as  Wes- 
ley, Emerson  as  well  as  Edwards,  Edward 
Everett  Hale  as  well  as  General  Booth. 

Ill 

While  religious  experience  is  far  too  deep  and 
vital  a  reality  to  be  a  mere  intellectual  process 
or  attitude,  it  is  nevertheless  fundamentally 
and  indubitably  rational.  For  at  the  heart  of 
religious  experience  is  faith,  and  as  Fries  said, 
"Faith  springs  immediately  from  the  very  inner 


EXPERIENTIAL  THEOLOGY        53 

essence  of  Reason."  Faith  is  the  reach  of  the 
soul  into  the  eternal  verities.  It  is  that  by  which 
we  understand  that  the  worlds  were  formed  by 
the  word  of  God.  Its  atmosphere  is  that  of 
sanity  and  calm  and  sweet  reasonableness. 

It  often  seems  quite  otherwise.  Clouds  and 
darkness  are  not  seldom  round  about  religious 
experience — mental  confusion,  nervous  excite- 
ment, sometimes  even  moral  instability.  Yet 
beneath  all  these  disturbances  there  is  an  abid- 
ing calm  of  rational  conviction.  A  person  who 
has  a  religious  experience  knows,  and  knows 
that  he  knows.  He  may  make  sad  work  of  de- 
fining his  knowledge.  He  may  make  even  sad- 
der work,  at  times,  of  living  it.  Yet  he  knows 
that  he  has  touched  Something,  or  Someone, 
that  is  real,  rational,  abiding.  The  use  of  such 
phrases  as  the  "Rock  of  Ages,"  the  "sure  foun- 
dation," "blessed  assurance,"  and  the  like, 
however  crude,  indicates  this  sense  of  having 
reached  the  foundation  truths,  the  roots  of 
rationality.  Religious  truth  is  rational  because 
it  is  personal.  The  very  precipitancy  and  dog- 
matic assurance  with  which  the  possessor  of  a 
Christian  experience  sometimes  hastens  to  pro- 
pound and  defend  an  incongruous  set  of  doc- 
trines is  evidence  of  the  strength  of  a  convic- 
tion far  greater  than  the  ability  to  formulate  it. 

But  can  truth  be  rational  in  essence  unless  it 


54        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

is  correct  in  explication?  Certainly  it  can. 
One  can  grasp  truth  too  great  for  him  to  un- 
derstand, much  less  explain.  The  failure  to 
realize  this  indicates  that  one  has  not  yet  got- 
ten below  the  surface  of  truth  and  imagines 
that  it  consists  in  definitions,  propositions,  and 
demonstrations,  not  knowing  that  these  are  but 
its  trappings  and  suits,  and  that  there  is  that 
within  that  passeth  show.  One  may  seize  with 
a  firm  and  unrelaxing  grasp  an  eternal  and  vital 
truth  and  yet  be  quite  inconsequential  in  his 
understanding  and  interpretation  of  it,  just  as 
a  scientist  may  gain  possession  of  indubitable 
facts  in  nature  and  form  a  hypothesis  regarding 
them  which  proves  to  be  entirely  untenable.  A 
religiously  awakened  man  may  be  "very  sure 
of  God"  and  yet  propound  and  defend  a  theol- 
ogy as  impossible  as  the  Ptolemaic  theory  of 
the  heavens.  Yet  because  one  holds  the  Ptole- 
maic theory  we  do  not  regard  the  sun  as  a 
myth.  It  is  his  theory  of  it  that  is  at  fault. 

The  inherent  rationality  of  religious  expe- 
rience is  revealed  not  only  in  the  sense  of  convic- 
tion it  begets,  but  in  the  strong  impulse  it  gives 
to  thinking  as  well  as  to  action.  It  stimulates 
thought.  It  is  true  there  is  a  type  of  religious 
experience  that  seems  to  stifle  thought,  that 
lives  in  mere  feeling — rising  and  falling  in  tem- 
perature with  the  fluctuations  of  a  mere  emo- 


EXPERIENTIAL  THEOLOGY        55 

tional  caloric.  This  hectic,  contagious  sentiment 
sadly  needs  the  corrective  of  disciplined  thought. 
However  inaccurate  and  blundering  the  think- 
ing that  arises  from  religious  experience  may  be, 
it  is  essential  to  its  life,  and  tends — unless  it 
becomes  divorced  from  experience — to  self- 
correction  and  ever  closer  approximation  to 
an  adequate  expression  of  the  reality  behind  it. 
Moreover,  the  theory  reacts  upon  the  expe- 
rience, aiding  or  hindering  it  by  giving  it  either 
a  normal  or  an  abnormal  expression,  a  free  or  a 
choked  channel.  Not  only  so,  but  theology 
helps  to  induce  experience  through  the  medium 
of  ideas. 

IV 

If,  then,  theology  flows  normally  and  freely  out 
of  religious  experience,  if  it  is  the  means  of  the 
self -interpretation  and  an  aid  to  the  impartation 
of  experience — that  by  which  it  relates  itself  to 
the  thought-world — what  are  the  natural  forms 
which  an  experiential  theology  will  take? 

It  is  clear — is  it  not? — that  the  form  of 
theology  which  lies  nearest  to  experience  itself 
is  purest  and  best,  that  is,  the  simple,  spon- 
taneous theology  which  we  hardly  recognize 
to  be  such  at  all.  This  is  the  theology  of 
insight.  It  expresses  itself  in  clear  and  simple 
affirmations  and  aphorisms.  It  finds  its  most 
perfect  embodiment  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus. 


56        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

It  is  not  customary  to  think  of  Jesus  as  a 
theologian.  In  the  sense  in  which  we  usually 
use  the  term  he  is  not;  and  yet,  in  the  truest 
sense,  he  is  the  greatest  of  theologians — partly 
for  the  reason  that  he  does  not  appear  to  be 
one.  As  has  more  than  once  been  said,  glass  is 
made  not  to  be  seen,  but  to  be  seen  through. 
Jesus  was  so  transparent  a  teacher  that  we  see 
the  truth  through  him,  or,  rather,  in  him,  and 
forget  that  by  his  very  transparency  he  shows 
himself  the  master  theologian.  The  simplest 
truth  is  the  greatest  truth,  in  theology  as  else- 
where; and  he  is  the  greatest  theologian  who 
can  make  great  truth  simple  and  self-evident. 
We  hesitate  to  call  Jesus  a  theologian  for  the 
same  reason  that  we  hesitate  to  call  Lincoln  an 
orator;  and  yet  as  the  Gettysburg  Address  is 
the  purest  of  oratory,  so  the  parable  of  the 
prodigal  is  the  purest  of  theology. 

Theology  at  the  first  remove,  however,  is 
not  the  only  theology  that  is  needed.  Truth  in 
its  noble  simplicity  is  most  precious,  as  well  as 
most  convincing;  but  truth  needs  also  to  be 
formulated,  correlated,  organized — shall  we  not 
say  systematized?  Thus  we  find  ourselves,  in 
spite  of  ourselves,  calling  back  from  banish- 
ment that  old-time  offender,  systematic  theol- 
ogy. Can  any  one  doubt  that  there  is  a  place 
for  systematic  theology — provided  it  does  not 


EXPERIENTIAL  THEOLOGY        57 

become  the  victim  of  its  own  method  and  put 
system  above  truth?  Surely  there  is  a  place 
for  unity  and  order  in  the  interpretation  of 
religious  experience.  It  can  never  be  less  than 
one  of  the  great  tasks  of  the  human  mind  to 
endeavor  to  coordinate  religious  experience  with 
other  forms  of  experience.  We  cannot  live  an 
ordered  and  harmonious  life  until  the  truths  of 
religion  are  adjusted  to  those  of  the  outer 
world  as  well  as  to  that  complex  of  mental 
activity  which  makes  up  our  inner  microcosm. 


Another  kind  of  theology  for  which  there  will 
always  be  need,  and  toward  which  there  is  a 
natural  impulse  from  Christian  experience,  is 
the  theology  of  persuasion  and  defense,  or 
Apologetic.  Just  as  surely  as  one  who  has  come 
into  possession  of  a  great  and  releasing  expe- 
rience, moved  by  the  desire  to  impart  it,  seeks 
to  induce  another  to  share  it,  just  so  surely  he 
finds  himself  formulating  an  Apologetic,  a  the- 
ology of  rational  persuasion.  Questions  and 
objections  appear,  and  must  be  met.  Such  a 
theology  arises  as  naturally  and  inevitably  as 
the  artist  fulfills  the  impulse  to  put  upon 
canvas  the  vision  of  beauty  that  invests  his 
soul,  or  the  poet  to  sing  the  song  that  fills  his 
heart  and  will  not  let  him  be  silent. 


58        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

Apologetic  theology  has,  it  is  true,  often  be- 
come mechanical,  unconvincing  and  unper- 
suasive;  but  that  is  the  fault  of  the  artist,  not 
of  the  art.  Apologetic  in  the  age  of  Justin,  of 
Origen,  and  of  Chrysostom  was  no  perfunctory 
or  fruitless  task.  Even  in  the  days  of  Butler's 
Analogy  and  Schleiermacher's  Addresses  it 
proved  itself  more  puissant  than  all  the  weap- 
ons of  skepticism  or  the  panoply  of  indiffer- 
ence. The  power  of  Apologetic  is  not  yet 
exhausted.  It  only  needs  the  freshening  and 
vitalizing  of  a  new  passion  for  truth. 

Still  another  form  of  theology,  Speculative 
theology,  flows  freely  from  the  fountain  of 
Christian  experience.  Speculation — for  some 
minds  at  least — is  the  natural  overflow  of  the 
upwelling  spring  of  the  religious  life.  Through 
it  the  eager  mind  gains  scope  and  play  and 
enlargement.  Never  was  the  speculative  in- 
stinct more  exuberant  and  untrammeled  than 
in  the  patristic  age.  Here  is,  as  it  were,  the 
playground  of  theology.  Men  like  Clement  of 
Alexandria,  Origen,  and  Augustine  were  like 
minds  that  have  been  suddenly  given  wings 
and  found  themselves  afloat  in  the  boundless 
and  sustaining  atmosphere  of  the  divine  free- 
dom and  love.  Should  they  not  fly  at  will — 
here,  there,  everywhere — unrestrained  and  with- 
out too  great  regard  for  consequence  and 


EXPERIENTIAL  THEOLOGY        59 

consistency?  Nor  have  they  lacked  successors 
through  all  the  centuries.  The  abuse  of  the 
speculative  impulse  has  indeed  been  great,  but 
abuse  never  justifies  permanent  disuse. 

In  these  gray,  pragmatic  days  the  specula- 
tive instinct  has  been  crushed.  The  bound- 
aries of  speculation  have  been  fenced  with 
caution;  and  wisely  so.  For  speculation  had 
been  guilty  of  assumptions  and  vagaries  by 
means  of  which  the  verities  became  confused 
with  the  possibilities,  and  steady  values  with 
fluctuating  theories.  And  yet  there  is  a  place, 
and  always  will  be,  for  speculation  in  the 
realm  of  religious  truth.  Even  science,  with  all 
her  magnifying  of  exactness  and  precaution, 
has  of  late  indulged  in  quite  as  free  speculation 
as  that  for  which  she  has  too  freely  condemned 
theology.  In  each  field  speculation  has  its 
place.  Only  let  us  beware  not  to  mistake 
speculation  about  truth  for  essential  truth. 

VI 

Thus  the  theology  of  experience  gives  us  back 
the  fundamental  forms  of  theology,  only  with  a 
new  spirit,  a  clear  guiding  principle,  and  a  hith- 
erto unregarded  criterion  of  values.  Instead  of 
the  lifeless  and  repressive  theology  which  has 
created  so  strong  a  reaction,  with  its  dogmatism, 
its  systemism,  and  its  unanchored  speculation, 


60        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

we  are  gaining  a  theology  grounded  in  self -evi- 
dencing truth-experience — personal,  intuitional, 
spiritual — which  from  this  underlying  expe- 
rience proceeds  reverently  and  freely  to  the  es- 
sential task  of  interpretation  and  organization. 

Experiential  theology,  then — let  it  be  said 
once  more — is,  in  the  best  sense,  also  rational 
theology,  though  at  the  opposite  pole  from  ra- 
tionalism. It  is  no  theology  of  tongues,  though 
inspired  by  the  same  Spirit  whence  issues  the 
gift  of  tongues.  It  does  not,  as  Paul  did  not, 
despise  tongues.  On  the  contrary,  theology  has 
learned,  somewhat,  how  to  understand  tongues 
and  to  interpret.  Yet  it  would  rather  prophesy. 
Of  prophecy  without  the  Spirit,  however,  it 
has  learned  to  be  cautious.  That  way  im- 
potence and  dry-rot  lie.  When  the  Spirit 
speaks  it  would  speak,  and  in  terms  as  rational 
as  they  are  spiritual;  and  when  the  Spirit  is 
silent  it  would  be  silent. 

A  theology  of  this  order  wins  respect  upon  all 
sides.  It  does  not  affront  philosophy,  for 
philosophy  itself  is  slowly  coming  to  recognize 
the  inadequacy  of  mere  intellectualism.  It  does 
not  antagonize  science,  for  its  realm  is  other 
than  that  of  science,  though  contiguous  to  it.  It 
does  not  offend  the  childlike  soul,  for  itself  has 
the  childlike  spirit;  yet  it  wins  the  thoughtful 
mind,  for  it  seeks  to  give  a  reason  for  its  faith. 


CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  THE 
RELIGIONS1 

THE  interpretation  of  Christianity  as  expe- 
rience helps  greatly  toward  an  understanding 
of  its  place  among  the  religions.  The  roots  of 
Christianity  have  never  been  thoroughly  ex- 
plored. Only  in  recent  years,  indeed,  has 
Christianity  been  thought  of  as  having  roots, 
or  as  being  a  plant,  a  growth,  at  all.  Rather 
has  it  been  looked  upon  as  a  donum  Dei,  a 
supernatural  deposit,  a  treasury  of  knowledge 
and  beatitude  delivered  incomparable  and  com- 
plete to  mankind.  For  the  better  part  of  two 
millenniums  this  conception  prevailed.  Now 
and  again,  however,  the  cunning  eye  of  scien- 
tific criticism,  trained  in  the  laws  of  a  universe 
inconsonant  with  this  assumption,  saw  through 
its  meagerness  and  caught  glimpses  of  a  wider 
relationship  and  a  deeper  meaning. 

I 

The  impossibility  of  a  completely  segregated, 
independent,  and  purely  supernatural  religion 
has  become  increasingly  evident.  Even  from 
the  first  the  dependence  of  Christianity  upon 
Judaism  was  so  clear  that  the  two  Testaments 

1  From  The  Hibbert  Journal,  vol.  vii,  No.  3,  April,  1909. 
61 


62        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

were  incorporated  as  complementary  parts  of  a 
single  revelation;  but  that  left  the  revelation 
still  static,  unrelated,  isolated. 

It  meant  the  coming  of  a  great  change  when 
the  discovery  was  made  that  other  kindred  reli- 
gions, notably  the  Babylonian,  disclose  ideas, 
practices,  legends,  strikingly  similar  to  those  of 
Israel,  suggesting  a  common  origin.  Likewise 
was  the  assurance  of  the  older  Apologetic  dis- 
turbed by  the  accumulating  testimony  of  his- 
torical scholarship  to  the  large  place  which 
Hellenism  has  had  in  the  development  of 
Christianity.  It  was  not  merely  an  "influence 
of  Greek  ideas  upon  the  Church,"  as  Edwin 
Hatch  termed  it  in  his  Hibbert  Lectures;  it 
was  a  mighty  current  of  idea  and  impulse  that 
poured  into  Christianity  from  Greek  Philos- 
ophy and  mingled  its  waters  with  the  earlier 
fount  from  Sion's  hill  and  the  fresh  pellucid 
stream  from  the  hillsides  of  Galilee.  "The  in- 
flux of  Hellenism,  of  the  Greek  spirit,  and  the 
union  of  the  gospel  with  it,"  says  Harnack, 
"form  the  greatest  fact  in  the  history  of  the 
church  in  the  second  century;  and  when  the 
fact  was  once  established  as  a  foundation,  it 
continued  through  the  following  centuries."2 
Earlier  even  than  this,  in  the  Pauline  and  Johan- 
nine  theologies,  the  molding  power  of  the  Greek 

*  What  is  Christianity?    Second  ed.,  p.  214. 


CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  RELIGIONS  63 

mind  had  begun  to  make  itself  felt  in  Christian- 
ity. And  who  can  doubt  that  the  Christianity  of 
to-day,  on  its  intellectual  side,  carries  the  per- 
manent impress  of  the  Greek  mind?  It  is  signi- 
ficant that  so  many  of  our  church  buildings  are 
in  the  form  (more  or  less)  of  the  Greek  temple. 
Yet  Judaism  and  Hellenism  are  far  from  ex- 
hausting the  indebtedness  of  Christianity  to 
other  religions.  That  life-and-death  conflict 
between  good  and  evil — the  good  God  and  the 
righteous  man  pitted  against  the  forces  of 
darkness  and  falsehood — which  absorbed  the 
soul  of  the  ancient  Persians,  may  have  made 
over  to  Christianity,  chiefly  through  the  Per- 
sian-Jewish contact  in  Babylon,  something  of 
its  virile  sense  of  powers  to  be  overcome  and 
wrongs  to  be  overthrown,  which  has  quickened 
the  Christian  spirit  and  moved  it  to  greater 
earnestness  in  the  battle  with  sin.  The  strength 
of  the  Christian  belief  in  a  future  life  and  in 
the  Fravashis,  the  spirits  whose  faces  always 
behold  the  face  of  God — does  it  not  come  in 
part  from  that  firm-knit  faith  that  nerved  the 
souls  of  the  followers  of  Zarathustra?3 


3  "Before  the  Exile  the  Jewish  creed  was  very  dim  indeed  as  to  resurrec- 
tion, immortality,  future  judgment,  and  all  we  hold  most  dear.  .  .  .  The 
Irano-Vedic  lore  developed  in  Iran  the  first  definite  form  of  our  ideas  as 
to  the  future  state,  according  to  the  obvious  data  in  the  case." — Dr.  Law- 
rence H.  Mills,  Zarathustra,  Philo,  the  Archemenids,  and  Israel,  p.  208.  It 
should  be  added  that  Professor  James  Hope  Moulton  did  not  recognize 
any  considerable  influence  of  Persian  upon  Jewish  theology.  See  his  The 
Treasure  of  the  Magi,  chap.  iv. 


64        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

Modern  Christianity  is  characterized  by  a 
devoted  loyalty  to  the  home — "the  Christian 
home"  we  often  call  it,  knowing  how  closely  it 
is  associated  with  that  elevation  of  woman 
which  everywhere  follows  the  footsteps  of  the 
evangel.  Whence  did  Christianity  acquire  this 
devotion  to  the  home?  Hardly  from  the  Orient 
alone.  Jesus  deeply  sanctioned  monogamy, 
and  enforced  the  principles  upon  which  alone 
the  home  can  be  built;  but  it  was  only  with 
the  advent  of  the  Teutonic  peoples  into  the 
family  of  Christianity,  with  that  sacred  foster- 
ing of  the  home  life  which  was  their  especial 
virtue,  that  the  home  came  to  occupy  the 
place  of  peculiar  honor  and  sanctity  which  it 
now  holds  in  our  Christian  heritage. 

Without  attempting  a  summary  of  all  the 
contributions,  religious  and  ethical,  which 
Christianity  has  received  from  sources  outside 
its  own  immediate  content,  it  is  becoming  in- 
creasingly clear  that,  both  in  origin  and  in  de- 
velopment, it  has  drawn  largely  from  the  best 
religious  thought  and  life  of  the  race.  The 
two  deepest  strata  of  the  religious  life  of  hu- 
manity, Semitism  and  Aryanism,  have  given  of 
their  richest  ores  to  Christianity.  When  we 
say  that  Jesus  was  a  Jew,  and  that  upon  the 
best  religious  inheritance  and  instruction  of  his 
people  and  age  he  constructed  his  faith,  we  may 


CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  RELIGIONS  65 

not  forget  that  this  heritage  of  his  reached  far 
back  of  Hebraism,  back  of  Jacob  and  of  Abra- 
ham, back  to  that  primitive  and  shadowy 
realm  of  human  origins  in  which  there  first 
sprang  up  the  idea  that  there  are  gods  at  all 
and  that  a  tie  of  some  sort  unites  the  individual 
man  to  his  tribal  god  and  to  his  tribal  brother. 
Out  of  the  Semite  the  Hebrew,  out  of  *he  Hebrew 
the  Jew,  out  of  the  Jew  the  Christian.  And  who 
shall  say  how  much  the  Christian  of  to-day  owes 
to  that  savage,  remote  Semite,  struggling  out  of 
his  animalism  towards  a  dawning  light  within? 
In  the  same  way,  when  we  say  that  Hellenism 
furnished  a  large  part  of  the  intellectual  con- 
ceptions out  of  which  Christian  theology  was 
formed,  we  may  not  justly  leave  out  of  account 
the  antecedents  of  Hellenism.  For  Hellenism 
did  not  begin  complete,  any  more  than  Athene 
sprang  full-armed  from  the  head  of  Zeus.  Far 
down  in  the  early  aspirations  and  outreachings 
of  the  mind  of  the  Aryan  race,  before  its  migra- 
tions from  the  steppes  of  Southern  Russia, 
were  germinating  those  rational  unifying  con- 
ceptions which  the  new  religion  of  Jesus  caught 
and  consecrated  to  its  urgent  ends.  Out  of 
Aryanism  Hellenism,  out  of  Hellenism  Platon- 
ism,  out  of  Platonism  Alexandrianism,  out  of 
Alexandrianism,  reaching  down  to  the  present 
day,  the  New  Theology. 


66        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

Neither  royal  family  of  Europe  nor  self-made 
man  of  America  can  deny  relationship  with  the 
savage  man  and  the  ancestral  ape.  Nor  can 
Christianity  ignore  its  kinship  with  religion  in 
its  lowest  and  crudest  beginnings.  What  then? 
Is  it  degraded  by  the  relationship,  polluted  by 
the  superstitious  crudities  of  religion's  earliest 
awakening?  Rather  does  it  by  this  kinship 
gain  touch  with  total  humanity  in  its  upward 
striving,  added  sense  of  the  greatness  of  the 
instinct  which  out  of  such  chaos  and  meanness 
can  produce  such  harmony  and  grace — as  the 
water-lily,  with  its  roots  in  the  slime  of  the 
lake-bottom,  blooms  snow-white  and  fragrant 
in  the  summer  sun. 

II 

The  study  of  Comparative  Religion  is  reveal- 
ing Christianity  in  a  wholly  new  light,  from  the 
vantage  ground  of  a  fresh  viewpoint.  For  the 
first  time  we  are  getting  perspective.  In  two 
ways  the  gain  is  inestimable.  Comparison  is 
disclosing  the  inherent  strength  and  superiority 
of  Christianity  as  it  could  appear  in  no  other 
way.  All  values  are  clarified  by  comparison. 
The  great  Kohinoor,  placed  beside  lesser  dia- 
monds, does  not  render  them  worthless,  but 
only  thus  does  its  own  resplendence  appear. 
When  the  birds  are  caroling  their  gayest,  and 


CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  RELIGIONS  67 

suddenly  the  song  of  the  hermit-thrush  rises 
above  the  roundelay,  soulful,  wistful,  master- 
ful, one  perceives  to  what  wealth  and  height  of 
expression  a  bird-song  can  attain.  It  is  only 
when  Jesus  moves  across  the  field  of  vision 
where  other  men  have  walked  that  we  know 
what  a  man  can  be.  Other  religions  do  not 
lose  when  placed  beside  Christianity,  except 
relatively,  but  Christianity  gains.  There  is  at 
once  a  clearer  understanding,  both  of  them 
and  of  itself.  The  presence  of  the  best  reveals 
in  the  same  instant  the  goodness  of  the  good 
and  the  supremacy  of  the  best.  It  was  the 
folly  of  unfaith  to  hesitate  so  long  to  place 
Christianity  upon  a  common  base  level  with 
other  religions,  fully,  freely,  and  without  preju- 
dice. For  only  as  it  stands  on  the  same  level 
can  its  true  height  be  seen.  The  Parliament  of 
Religions,  though  it  cost  many  of  us  a  pang  of 
dismay  at  the  time,  was  one  of  the  greatest 
furtherances  of  Christianity  that  the  friends  of 
true  religion  ever  accomplished. 

The  supremacy  of  Christianity  appears  by 
comparison,  both  in  what  it  includes  and  in 
what  it  excludes.  All  that  is  worthiest  and 
highest  in  other  religions  proves  by  comparison 
to  be  in  Christianity.  Is  it  the  reverence  of 
Hebraism,  the  freedom  of  Hellenism,  the  moral 
earnestness  of  Zoroastrianism,  the  mysticism  of 


68        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

Brahmanism,  the  sacrificial  spirit  of  Buddhism? 
All  are  here  in  Christianity,  and  here,  not  in 
excess  of  emphasis,  but  in  full  and  balanced 
harmony.  And  in  much,  too,  that  is  in  other 
religions  and  not  in  Christianity,  its  supremacy 
may  be  seen  quite  as  clearly.  Angles  of  distor- 
tion, ignoble  and  limiting  ideas  of  God,  asceti- 
cisms that  wrong  humanity,  conceptions  of 
nature  and  spirit  that  fetter  and  retard  the 
spirit — how  free  on  the  whole  from  these  de- 
fects of  other  religions  is  Christianity!  Not 
that  such  excrescences  have  not  become  at- 
tached to  Christianity  and  worked  serious  ill, 
but  they  do  not  belong  to  its  spirit  and  essence. 
We  must  not,  however,  suffer  this  broader 
outlook  upon  religion  as  a  whole  to  blind  our 
eyes  to  the  true  character  of  Christianity,  lest 
we  rob  it  of  its  own  individuality.  The  fact 
that  Christianity  conjoined  Hebraism  and  Hel- 
lenism by  no  means  reduces  it  to  a  mere 
syncretism.  Nor  does  the  fact  that  it  has  in- 
corporated elements  from  other  religions  make 
it  an  eclecticism.  No  one  who  understands 
Christianity  would  hesitate  to  say  that  it  is 
far  more  than  a  union  of  Hebrew  and  Greek 
elements.  Whatever  Christianity  has  taken  up 
it  has  assimilated.  This  is  its  secret — a  mar- 
velous power  of  assimilation.  With  that  aston- 
ishing alchemy  which  indicates  originality  of 


CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  RELIGIONS  69 

organism,  Christianity  has  made  its  own,  trans- 
formed, renewed  whatever  it  has  laid  hold  upon. 
Syncretisms  combine,  eclecticisms  choose  and 
construct,  but  only  life  assimilates.  Explain  it 
as  you  may,  there  is  something  in  Christianity 
that  enabled  it  to  take  Hebrew  piety  and 
Greek  thought,  and  transform,  vitalize,  adapt 
each  to  its  own  nature  and  ends,  so  that  it  goes 
forth  not  wearing  them  as  garments  but  in- 
carnating them  as  life.  It  is  only  an  inherently 
puissant  and  vital  faith  that  can  be  receptive 
without  becoming  amorphous  and  demoralized. 
One  has  but  to  contrast  Christianity  and  its 
power  of  assimilative  receptivity  with  the  later 
religion  of  ancient  Rome  and  its  heterogeneous 
confusion  of  incongruous  faiths,  to  recognize 
that  the  difference  is  no  less  than  that  between 
life  and  death. 

When  we  come  to  ask  for  the  secret  of  this 
assimilative  power  we  find  ourselves  approach- 
ing the  problem  which  has  proved  so  fascinat- 
ing of  late:  What  is  the  essence  of  Christianity? 
Where  is  the  hiding  of  its  power?  It  is  not  diffi- 
cult, by  analyzing  Christianity,  as  Harnack  has 
done,  to  discover  certain  potent  fundamental 
truths — the  Fatherhood  of  God,  the  worth  of 
the  soul,  the  kingdom  of  God — which,  at  least 
in  their  emphasis  and  fervor,  are  distinctively 
and  characteristically  Christian.  But,  after  all, 


70        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

close  as  these  truths  lie  to  the  heart  of  Chris- 
tianity, they  are  not  its  inner  essence.  Our 
New  Theology  is  in  great  part  characterized  by 
its  showing  that  Christianity  won  its  way  by 
uniting  two  great  truths  concerning  God  which 
no  other  religious  philosophy  has  harmonized — 
Transcendence  and  Immanence.  Yet  no  one 
would  think  of  finding  even  in  that  synthesis, 
important  as  it  is,  the  essence  of  the  Christian 
religion.  The  ethics  of  Christianity  too,  and 
even  its  cult,  reflect  a  simplicity  and  sincerity 
which  help  to  account  for  the  strong  hold  which 
Christianity  secured  and  kept  over  the  human 
mind;  but  none  of  these  things  solve  the  prob- 
lem of  its  essence.  To  reach  that,  one  must  go 
deeper  into  that  profound  and  subtle  realm 
that  holds  the  hidden  springs  of  all  that  moves 
us  most — personality.  At  the  very  source  and 
center  of  Christianity  there  glows  a  Person 
who — say  what  we  may  of  the  incompleteness 
of  his  life-story  and  the  later  misconceptions 
which  have  obscured  his  true  character — is  the 
most  compelling,  transforming  Fact  in  human 
history.  The  "incomparable  significance  of 
this  personality  as  a  force  still  working  in  his- 
tory," says  Harnack4 — "this  is  the  real  essence 
of  Christianity."  "When  God  and  everything 
that  is  sacred  threaten  to  disappear  in  dark- 

«  Christianity  and  History,  p.  44. 


CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  RELIGIONS  71; 

ness,  or  our  doom  is  pronounced,  when  the 
mighty  forces  of  inexorable  nature  seem  to 
overwhelm  us  and  the  bounds  of  good  and  evil 
to  dissolve,  when,  weak  and  weary,  we  despair 
of  finding  God  at  all  in  this  dismal  world — it  is 
then  that  the  personality  of  Christ  may  save 
us.  Here  we  have  a  life  that  was  lived  wholly 
in  the  fear  of  God — resolute,  unselfish,  pure; 
here  there  glows  and  flashes  a  grandeur,  a  love 
which  draws  us  to  itself."5  Making  the  largest 
possible  allowance  for  idealization  in  the  por- 
trait of  Jesus  in  the  gospels,  there  remains,  as  a 
necessary  basis  for  it,  a  personality  so  strong, 
so  pure,  so  noble,  as  to  leave  an  indelible  im- 
press upon  the  human  mind,  which  "far  from 
fading,  rather  grows,"  and  gives  promise  of 
growing  till  it  shall  remold  humanity  into  its 
likeness.  "We  needs  must  love  the  highest 
when  we  see  it,"  and,  loving  it,  grow  like  it. 
Only  let  Jesus  Christ  be  kept  before  humanity 
long  enough  and  clearly  enough,  and  he  will 
make  it  over  into  his  own  image.6 

•P.47. 

8  The  supremacy  of  Jesus  in  the  eyes  of  others  than  Christians  is  well 
illustrated  in  the  generous  words  of  an  orthodox  Hindu  to  his  fellow  Hindus: 
"How  can  we  be  blind  to  the  greatness,  the  unrivaled  splendor  of  Jesus 
Christ?  Behind  the  British  Empire  and  all  European  powers  lies  the  single 
great  Personality — the  greatest  of  all  known  to  us — of  Jesus  Christ.  He 
lives  in  Europe  and  America,  in  Asia  and  Africa,  as  King  and  Guide  and 
Teacher.  He  lives  in  our  midst.  He  seeks  to  revive  religion  in  India.  We 
owe  everything,  even  this  deep  yearning  toward  our  own  ancient  Hinduism, 
to  Christianity."  See  J.  P.  Jones,  D.D.,  India's  Problem,  p.  357. 


72        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

But  is  not  Jesus  himself  also  a  product  of 
evolution?  Yes,  in  a  sense  Jesus  certainly  was 
a  racial  religious  product.  Generations  of 
spiritual  culture  entered  into  his  individuality. 
He  was  the  consummate  flower  blooming  on 
the  most  vigorous  branch  that  had  put  forth 
from  the  religious  trunk  of  humanity.  And 
yet  that  does  not  explain  him  wholly;  it  does 
not  touch  the  deepest  secret  of  his  being.  That 
transcendent  Self  within  him  which  rose  above 
the  physical,  the  temporal,  the  racial,  which 
met  and  mastered  limitation  and  circumstance, 
and  all  the  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  for- 
tune, and  turned  all  into  splendid  victory- 
how  shall  we  account  for  that?  It  cannot  be 
accounted  for,  save  as  one  sees  in  him  another 
self  beside  the  merely  racial  man — the  Second 
Man  from  heaven.  Not  that  this  twofold  self- 
hood is  peculiar  to  Jesus  Christ — it  belongs  to 
man  as  man — but  that  the  eternal  Self,  which 
in  us  is  but  inconstant  and  indistinct,  in  him 
was  so  full-orbed  and  supreme  that  of  him,  as 
of  no  other,  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 
could  write:  "And  the  Word  became  flesh." 

Ill 

The  conviction  is  gaining  ground  that  the 
hour  has  struck  for  a  universal  human  religion, 
that  the  advance  of  humanity,  as  a  whole,  re- 


CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  RELIGIONS  73 

quires  that  mankind  move  henceforth  under 
one  spiritual  leadership  toward  a  common  goal. 
Christianity  is  the  only  religion  that  can  pos- 
sibly fulfill  this  office.  In  the  light  of  the  study 
of  comparative  religion,  it  seems  an  extreme, 
almost  a  fanatical  aim,  to  advance  Christianity 
as  entitled  to  supersede  all  other  faiths;  and 
yet  it  is  only  in  the  light  of  such  a  study  that 
this  aim  gets  its  highest  encouragement. 

A  sufficient  reason — whether  there  be  others 
or  not — for  pressing  Christianity  as  the  only 
religion  fit  to  become  the  world's  religion  is 
that  the  others — to  put  it  squarely,  and  I  think 
fairly — have  failed.  Buddhism,  Confucianism, 
Mohammedanism,  with  the  minor  religions, 
have  all  failed.  Not  that  they  have  failed  in 
the  sense  of  not  holding  their  own  outwardly, 
and  even  making  gains,  nor  in  the  sense  of  not 
containing  a  great  deal  of  truth,  and  of  ac- 
complishing great  good — but  in  the  sense  of 
not  having  done  for  their  adherents  and  for 
humanity  what  religion  ought  to  do.  Not  that 
Christianity  itself  has  been  absolutely  success- 
ful; far  enough  from  that.  But  Christianity 
has,  at  least,  not  failed.  In  spite  of  serious 
deficiencies  and  limitations  on  the  part  of 
Christians,  Christianity  has,  by  comparison, 
accomplished  vastly  more  for  human  progress 
than  any  other  of  the  world's  faiths.  And  not 


74        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

only  by  its  works  does  Christianity  make  itself 
known,  but  also,  and  supremely,  by  that  inher- 
ent, essential  superiority  which  manifests  itself 
to  the  eye  of  unprejudiced  and  pure  rational 
judgment,  discerning  the  things  that  are  ex- 
cellent. 

In  nothing  is  the  true  supremacy  of  the 
Christian  Faith  better  attested  than  in  the 
inner  regeneration  which  takes  place  in  other 
faiths  when  Christianity  comes  into  close  con- 
tact with  them.  This  is  the  most  remarkable 
religious  fact,  perhaps,  in  the  life  of  the  Orient 
to-day.  Buddhism  in  India,  in  China,  and  in 
Japan  is  undergoing  a  marked  purification  in 
the  direction  of  Christian  ideals.  Moham- 
medanism itself  is  becoming  leavened  with 
Christian  principles  to  an  extent  but  little  un- 
derstood. A  Hindu,  writing  for  The  Hibbert 
Journal,  has  said  of  Christianity  that  "it  has 
quickened  Hinduism  with  a  new,  full  life,  the 
full  fruition  of  which  is  not  yet." 

Why  not,  then,  be  content  with  this  result? 
Why  not  let  Christianity  do  its  work  indirectly, 
and  depend  upon  these  rooted  religions  to  de- 
velop into  a  purity  and  power  sufficient  for  the 
needs  of  their  own  races?  The  answer  is  that 
these  religions,  in  spite  of  temporary  resuscita- 
tion, are  effete,  and  have  not  the  power  of 
development  and  adaptation;  they  lack  the 


CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  RELIGIONS  75 

moral  and  spiritual  vigor  and  resources  to 
meet  the  multiplying  demands  of  advancing 
humanity.  It  is  the  old  parable  of  the  new 
wine  and  the  old  wine-skins. 

But,  granted  the  need  of  a  universal  religion, 
and  that  none  of  the  Oriental  religions  is  able 
to  meet  the  need,  why  should  it  be  any  indi- 
vidual religion,  and  not,  rather,  a  new  and 
greater  religion  made  up  of  the  best  in  all  the 
religions,  a  religion  of  religions,  a  splendid  hy- 
brid obtained  by  what  has  been  termed  the 
"cross-fertilization  of  religions"?  At  first  blush 
there  is  a  certain  fascination  in  this  idea.  It 
has  an  air  of  breadth  and  cosmopolitanism  that 
gives  it  glitter,  but  it  soon  fades.  It  is  seen 
that  a  religion  which  is  coldly  compounded  of 
various  religions,  which  is  everything  in  gen- 
eral and  nothing  in  particular,  is  no  religion  at 
all.  To  disdain  a  particular  religion  in  favor 
of  Religion  is,  as  Dr.  Oman  has  said,  like  ob- 
jecting to  being  born  because  one  cannot  be 
man,  but  must  be  some  particular  man.  The 
dream  of  a  polyglot  religion  is  evaporating. 
What  humanity  needs  and  will  demand  is  a 
religion  with  a  character  of  its  own  and  a  his- 
tory of  its  own,  a  religion  whose  roots  have 
gone  down  deep  into  the  soil  of  many  genera- 
tions, which  has  grown  up  in  its  own  strength 
and  with  a  sense  of  its  own  mission,  against 


76        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

which  storms  have  beaten  and  suns  have 
burned  in  vain,  and  which  has  stood  the  test 
of  time  and  transplanting,  and  changing  civili- 
zations. A  religion  which  has  thus  sufficient 
might  of  its  own,  and  yet  sufficient  real  breadth 
and  inclusiveness  to  absorb  and  conserve  the 
truth  of  other  religions,  is  far  better  fitted  to 
become  the  religion  of  mankind  than  any 
syncretism  or  eclecticism. 


IV 

If  Christianity  is  to  be  set  forward  as  a 
world-religion,  a  faith  for  universal  humanity, 
its  adherents  must  strike  away  all  the  shackles 
that  bind  it,  all  the  cumbersome,  adventitious 
nonessentials  that  have  become  attached  to  it, 
and  restore  'to  it  the  freedom  of  its  qualities, 
the  strength,  and  simplicity  of  its  original  un- 
obscured  vision  and  unencumbered  power.7 
Too  many  intelligent  men  of  our  own  time,  who 
have  never  looked  for  the  essence  of  Chris- 
tianity, have  identified  it  with  dogmas  and 
forms  which  really  have  no  more  to  do  with 
real  Christianity  than  clothing  has  to  do  with 

7  "I  must  again  express  my  belief  that,  before  Christianity  is  to  gain 
acceptance  by  the  people  of  India,  it  must  be  dissociated  from  many 
Western  ideas  and  practices  which  seem  to  us  essential  even  to  its  very 
life." — Dr.  J.  P.  Jones,  India's  Problem,  p.  356. 


CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  RELIGIONS  77 

the  man.  Whatever  any  school  of  Christians 
may  protest  as  to  the  infidelity  of  refusing  to 
identify  Christianity  with  a  miraculous  revela- 
tion, or  an  infallible  Bible,  of  predestination, 
or  substitutionary  atonement,  or  eternal  pun- 
ishment, it  is  inexcusable  for  an  educated 
person  to  be  blind  to  the  fact  that  these  doc- 
trines never  were,  nor  can  be,  a  part  of  essen- 
tial Christianity.  The  Christian  faith  has  won 
its  way  sometimes  with  the  aid  of  these  doc- 
trines, sometimes  in  spite  of  them,  but  never 
because  of  them.  Christianity  is  a  religion  of 
rational  freedom,  and  if  it  has  too  often  been 
forced  to  assume  the  form  of  a  religion  of  ex- 
ternal authority,  the  result  can  only  be  a 
transient  travesty  of  its  true  character,  certain 
in  time  to  be  cast  aside. 

And  not  only  must  Christianity  be  divested 
of  its  impedimenta  if  it  is  to  make  conquest  of 
the  world;  there  must  be  restored  to  it  also 
that  genius  of  adaptation  to  varied  human 
need  and  environment  which  enabled  it  to 
break  the  bonds  of  Judaism  and  respond  to  the 
unconscious  call  of  the  Gentile  world.  This 
inexhaustible  adaptability,  this  power  of  lend- 
ing itself  to  the  deeper  needs  of  varied  races 
without  losing  its  own  character  and  indi- 
viduality, is,  I  repeat,  characteristic  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  can  come  only  from  a  character  so 


78        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

richly  human  that  it  speaks  to  the  spirit  of 
man  as  man.  No  other  religion  has  shown  a 
power  of  adaptation  comparable  with  this. 
Who  would  have  dreamed,  at  the  outset,  that 
Christianity  could  ever  have  found  its  most 
congenial  home  and  development  in  the  Teu- 
tonic race?  Itself  Oriental  in  origin  and  set- 
ting, why  should  it  ever  have  won  the  Occident, 
save  that  it  belongs  to  man  as  man? — so  large 
and  human  in  its  resources  that  nothing  else 
can  vie  with  it  in  its  appeal  to  a  discerning  and 
developing  race. 

It  is  a  natural  blunder  to  imagine  that  we  of 
the  West  have  made  Christianity  exclusively 
our  own,  explored  it,  exhausted  it,  stamped 
upon  it  its  final  form.  We  carry  it  back  to  the 
Orient  as  if  it  were  our  gift  to  the  peoples  that 
gave  it  birth.  In  a  sense  it  is,  in  another  sense 
it  is  their  gift  to  us.  Already  Christianity  is 
escaping  our  hands  to  do  its  own  great  work  in 
its  own  way.  The  day  of  the  missionary,  noble 
as  it  has  been  and  is,  already  draws  toward 
its  close.  Vitalized  and  vitalizing  Christian 
churches  and  civilizations  are  rising  with  firm 
but  not  ungrateful  insistence  to  claim  the  right 
to  develop  in  their  own  way.  Again  the  herald 
of  the  Coming  One  is  forced  to  proclaim  with 
mingled  sadness  and  joy,  "He  must  increase, 
but  I  must  decrease." 


CHRISTIANITY  AMONG  RELIGIONS  79 

V 

The  result  of  placing  Christianity  among  the 
religions,  of  subjecting  it  to  a  free  and  impartial 
comparison  with  other  faiths,  is  thus  twofold. 
In  the  first  place,  its  kinship  with  other  reli- 
gions is  proved.  The  religious  development  of 
the  race  is  one,  culminating  in  Christianity. 
The  Christian  faith  has  drawn  up  into  itself 
and  assimilated  the  highest  ideas  and  aspira- 
tions of  mankind.  The  life-blood  of  the  religion 
of  humanity  flows  in  its  veins;  its  victories  are 
the  fruitage,  in  part,  of  all  the  spiritual  strug- 
gles of  the  race  from  its  infancy.  In  the  second 
place,  such  a  comparison  reveals  the  inherent 
supremacy  of  Christianity,  its  historical  unique- 
ness, the  vitalizing  personality  of  its  Christ,  its 
unparalleled  power  of  adaptation  and  develop- 
ment, thus  laying  upon  it,  with  increasing 
urgency,  the  divine  obligation  of  universality. 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION1 

IN  the  ratified,  though  yet  unwritten,  treaty 
of  peace  which  has  closed  what  we  may  now 
haply  term  the  "late  unpleasantness"  between 
science  and  theology,  at  least  two  articles  of 
supreme  value  are  guaranteed.  The  first  is 
that  providing  for  the  complete  recognition  of 
natural  science.  All  truth  is  sacred,  all  forms 
of  truth-seeking  are  holy. 

Equally  evident  and  final  is  this  other  article 
—the  indispensability  of  theology.  When  the 
extreme  of  foolish  word  has  been  spoken  about 
the  uselessness  of  theology,  when  the  utmost 
effort  has  been  made  to  snub  or  to  stamp  it 
out  of  existence,  suddenly  it  springs  again 
where  we  should  least  expect  it,  in  the  very 
precincts  of  science.  Not  more  pronounced 
was  the  disposition  of  the  old-time  theologian 
to  invade  science  than  is  that  of  the  present- 
day  scientist  to  invade  theology.  The  compre- 
hensive scientist  cannot  easily  resist  the  temp- 
tation to  carry  his  thinking  over  into  the 
realm  of  theology.  Completeness  of  thought 
requires  it.  Thereby  he  pays  theology  the 
greatest  tribute  possible — the  recognition  of  its 

1  Inaugural  Address,  Pacific  School  of  Religion. 
80 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION  81 

indispensability.  A  very  considerable  and  able 
company  are  these  scientist-theologians  of  our 
time,  and  gladly  does  the  theologian  welcome 
them  to  a  share  in  his  problems — large  enough, 
surely,  to  go  around — only  asking  for  himself 
a  like  freedom  when  he  ventures  across  the 
boundary  line  of  science  in  search  of  that  in 
whose  pursuit  we  may  rightly  leap  all  barriers 
and  ignore  all  boundaries — Truth. 

n 

Among  the  discoveries  of  natural  science 
which  inevitably  lead  the  theologian  to  science 
and  the  scientist  to  theology  the  most  revolu- 
tionary and  reconstructive  is  evolution.  The 
religious  implicates  of  evolution  cannot  be  ig- 
nored by  either  theologian  or  scientist.  They 
have  long  clamored  for  settlement,  at  one  time 
threatening  disruption  and  anarchy,  at  another 
promising  profounder  solution  and  a  diviner 
order.  For  many  years  evolution  has  been  at 
once  the  hope  and  the  despair  of  theology,  now 
vainly  denounced  and  resisted,  now  profusely 
welcomed  and  given  the  keys  to  the  whole 
domain  of  religious  thought.  But  the  earlier 
agitation  has  passed.  The  storm  has  settled 
into  calm.  Hostility  and  dismay  have  disap- 
peared. The  time  has  come  when,  without 
heat  or  prejudice,  in  an  atmosphere  no  longer 


82        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

surcharged  with  the  odium  theologicum  and  the 
scientific  scorn  which  it  provoked,  in  the  clear 
light  of  perspective,  the  student  of  theology 
may  calmly  and  hopefully  face  the  task  of  esti- 
mating the  real  values  and  deficiencies  of  evo- 
lution as  a  purveyor  to  theology. 

m 

It  will  lend  concreteness  and  interest  to  our 
enterprise  if  we  can  select  some  single  state- 
ment of  evolution  theology,  that  can  be  rightly 
regarded  as  representative,  upon  which  to  con- 
centrate our  thought.  Fortunately,  we  are  able 
to  find  such  a  statement  ready  at  hand.  Among 
those  who  have  attempted  to  outline  or  to  con- 
struct an  evolution  theology  there  is  one  who 
is  justly  preeminent,  both  as  regards  personal 
character  and  distinction  and  the  value  and 
success  of  his  work.  I  refer  to  the  eminent 
scientist,  the  ideal  teacher,  Joseph  Le  Conte. 
It  is  already  clear  that  the  name  of  Joseph  Le 
Conte  is  to  grow  more  and  more  luminous  and 
his  works  are  to  follow  him  with  the  increasing 
influence  of  an  assured  reputation.  Of  the 
present  scientific  standing  of  Professor  Le 
Conte's  Evolution  and  Its  Relation  to  Religious 
Thought  I  do  not  pretend  to  speak,  but  of  its 
very  great  influence  in  clarifying  and  popular- 
izing evolution  and  in  commending  it  to  reli- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION  83 

gious  minds  there  can  be  no  question.  A  book 
written  at  the  suggestion  of  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  which  won  the  approval,  on  the  side 
of  science,  of  Professor  Romanes,  and  on  that 
of  religion  of  Bishop  Gore,  has  sufficient  ex- 
ternal commendation.  But,  far  more  than  that, 
it  has  the  almost  unique  distinction  of  combin- 
ing a  thoroughly  comprehensible  interpretation 
of  evolution  and  a  clear,  free,  and  at  times  pro- 
found, treatise  on  theology.  Here,  if  anywhere, 
theology  and  evolution  have  been  reconciled. 
Scientific  ardor,  religious  enthusiasm,  clearness 
and  comprehensiveness  of  thought,  and  lucidity 
of  expression  unite  to  give  this  volume  voice 
and  wings,  and  it  has  flown  far  and  found  wide 
and  warm  acceptance.  To  this  teacher  and  to 
this  book  let  us  turn,  then,  for  a  representative 
presentation  of  the  theological  implications  of 
evolution.  A  word  or  two  further  concerning 
the  author  and  his  peculiar  preparation  to  act 
the  part  of  mediator  between  Christianity  and 
science.  Reared  in  a  devout  home,  undergoing 
during  his  college  course  an  experience  which 
he  describes  as  "a  very  great  crisis  in  my  life," 
in  which  "life  took  on  a  new  and  glorious  sig- 
nificance," an  earnest  church  member,  cultured 
in  the  Bible,  in  literature,  and  to  some  extent  in 
philosophy,  educated  in  medicine  as  well  as  in 
science,  deeply  in  sympathy  with  the  widest 


84        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

humanistic  interests  of  his  time,  Joseph  Le 
Conte  was  most  remarkably  fitted — one  might 
almost  say  predestined — to  fill  the  role  of 
mediation  in  the  greatest  intellectual  contro- 
versy of  last  century.  He  himself  felt  most 
deeply  this  commission.  In  the  closing  words 
of  his  autobiography  Professor  Le  Conte  speaks 
of  himself  as  "the  pioneer  in  the  reaction 
against  the  materialistic  and  irreligious  impli- 
cation of  the  doctrine  of  evolution,"  and  gives 
expression  to  his  satisfaction  in  preaching  this 
gospel,  as  he  ventures  to  call  it,  "of  glad  tidings 
of  gre^at  joy  which  shall  be  to  all  peoples." 

It  would  be  strange  indeed  if  this  earnest 
conviction  of  a  message,  this  striking  volume, 
this  great  scientific  discovery  which  lay  back  of 
it,  meant  nothing  of  worth  to  Christian  theol- 
ogy; it  would  be  equally  strange  if  it  meant 
the  complete  subversion  of  the  great  truths  by 
which  men  have  lived  and  wrought  righteous- 
ness and  subdued  kingdoms  before  the  discov- 
ery. But,  now  to  our  difficult  task  of  estima- 
tion and  criticism.  First,  then,  let  us  seek  to 
deliminate  the  values  of  evolution  theology, 
and  then,  so  far  as  we  may,  to  point  out  its 
defects. 

IV 

The  first  and  perhaps  the  greatest  religious 
implicate  of  evolution  is  the  truth  of  the  Divine 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION  85 

Immanence.  The  conception  of  the  Absentee 
God  of  deism,  with  all  the  theological  anthropo- 
morphism and  all  the  religious  frigidity  which 
accompanied  it,  evolution  has  made  impossible 
in  the  future.  It  is  difficult  to  overestimate 
the  value  of  this  result.  We  shall  have  no  more 
forever  the  idea  of  a  "carpenter  God,"  an  an- 
thropomorphic God,  one  whom  men  think  they 
can  localize,  externalize,  placate,  bargain  with, 
and  inwardly  despise.  Professor  Le  Conte's 
uncompromising  alternative  must  be  accepted: 
"The  issue  (let  us  look  it  squarely  in  the  face) 
is:  Either  God  is  far  more  closely  related  with 
nature,  and  operates  it  in  a  more  direct  way 
than  we  have  recently  been  accustomed  to 
think,  or  else  (mark  the  alternative)  nature 
operates  itself  and  needs  no  God  at  all.  There 
is  no  middle  ground  tenable."2  Many  evolu- 
tionists have  accepted  the  latter  alternative, 
giving  to  evolution  that  materialistic  interpre- 
tation which  Professor  Le  Conte  so  earnestly 
renounces  and  so  ably  refutes.  For  himself,  he 
saw  the  truer  meaning  and  found  God  in  every 
step  and  process  of  evolution. 

It  would  be  a  shortsighted  exaggeration  to 
attribute  the  discovery  of  the  truth  of  the 
Divine  Immanence  to  evolution.  It  is  as  old 
as  the  Psalm-book,  as  Greek  philosophy,  as 

1  Evolution  and  Its  Relation  to  Religious  Thought,  p.  297,  second  edition. 


86        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

Hinduism.  The  early  Christian  fathers  were 
filled  with  it.  But  it  was  largely  lost  under  the 
schemes  and  systems  of  a  later  theology. 
Theistic  evolution  has  rediscovered  for  us  the 
truth  of  God's  nearness  to  nature  and  set  it 
where  it  can  never  again  be  lost.  This  means 
no  less  than  the  recovery  of  nature  to  the  uses 
of  the  religious  life.  It  is  the  vindication  of  the 
psalmist,  the  nature-lover,  the  poet,  who  have 
ever  found  God  in  the  light  of  setting  suns,  in 
star  and  bird  and  flower,  and  in  all  the  won- 
drous life  and  beauty  of  nature.  If  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  Divine  Presence  has  wrought 
itself  afresh  into  our  modern  theology,  our 
literature,  our  education,  our  daily  contact 
with  nature,  imparting  a  new  faith  and  joy 
and  peace  to  life,  let  us  not  forget  that  the  law 
of  evolution,  as  interpreted  by  such  men  as 
Joseph  Le  Conte  and  Nathaniel  Shaler,  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  and  Lyman  Abbott,  Alfred 
Tennyson  and  Robert  Browning,  has  opened 
the  way  for  this  larger,  deeper  conception  of 
God  in  his  world.  For  the  Divine  Immanence 
is  at  last  only  an  aspect  and  expression  of  the 
Divine  Love. 


To  supplement  this  truth  of  the  Divine  Im- 
manence evolution  has  furnished  also  a  posi- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION  87 

tive  contribution  to  theism  in  unfolding  the 
unity  and  teleology  of  the  universe.  Evolution 
indicates  that  "through  the  ages  one  increasing 
purpose  runs." 

Here  is  signal  confirmation  of  the  evidence  of 
design.  "It  has  been  said,  it  is  continually 
being  said,  that  evolution  has  destroyed  for- 
ever the  teleological  view  of  nature — that  is, 
the  idea  of  design  in  nature.  Yes,  if  we  mean 
the  manlike,  cabinetmaking,  watchmaking  de- 
sign of  Paley,  and  older  writers — a  separate 
petty  design  for  each  separate  object.  It  has 
indeed  destroyed  this,  but  only  to  replace  it 
by  a  far  nobler  conception — a  truly  godlike  de- 
sign, a  design  embracing  all  space,  and  running 
through  all  time,  including  and  absorbing  all 
possible  separate  designs,  and  predetermining 
them  by  a  universal  law  of  evolution."3  It  is 
impossible  to  overestimate  the  scope  and  splen- 
dor of  this  new  teleology.  "The  process  of 
evolution,"  says  John  Fiske,  "is  itself  the 
working  out  of  a  mighty  teleology,  of  which 
our  finite  understandings  can  fathom  but  the 
scantiest  rudiments."4  If  evolution  has  taken 
away  special  design,  it  has  given  us  in  place  of 
it  cosmic  design. 


3  Evolution  and  Its  Relation  to  Religious  Thought,  p.  357. 

4  Cosmic  Philosophy,  vol.  ii,  p.  406,  quoted  by  James  Seth  in  Ethical 
Principles,  p.  431. 


88        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

VI 

Another  very  valuable  asset  has  come  to  us 
through  evolution  in  the  vast  enlargement  and 
enrichment  of  the  conception  of  progress.  It 
is  true  that  the  law  of  growth,  of  unfolding— 
the  larger  law  which  should  be  termed  Devel- 
opment, of  which  evolution  is  but  a  segment- 
was  recognized  almost  as  early  as  man  began 
to  think.  Aristotle  gave  it  scientific  statement. 
Jesus  Christ  dwelt  upon  it  with  profound  em- 
phasis and  wrought  it  into  the  very  structure 
of  his  lifework.  No  other,  in  any  age,  philoso- 
pher, teacher,  scientist,  has  ever  approached 
Jesus  in  insight  into  this  divine  law  of  develop- 
ment and  absolute  confidence  in  its  results. 
Unto  it  he  intrusted  with  unwavering  certainty 
the  seed  of  his  Kingdom.  And  the  result  justi- 
fied his  faith.  No  age,  no  generation  has  en- 
tirely missed  the  vision  of  this  law  of  progress. 
And  yet  no  generation  has  ever  had  the  full 
effulgence  of  it  until  our  own.  And  evolution, 
all  unwittingly,  but  not  unguided,  has  been  the 
means  of  opening  its  splendor  to  our  view. 

Through  the  doorway  of  scientific  evolution 
we  have  passed  into  a  new  and  larger  world, 
wherein  the  law  of  progress  is  seen  to  have  not 
only  cosmic  scope,  but  universal  human  sig- 
nificance. In  the  light  of  development  history 
takes  on  a  new  meaning.  Law,  literature, 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION  89 

science,  social  science,  theology — all  are  reborn. 
Life  itself  is  transfigured.  All  things  fall  into 
harmony.  Eternal  hope  springs  in  the  heart 
of  humanity.  The  man  who  has  not  felt  the 
music  of  the  law  of  eternal  progress  in  his  soul 
is  fit  for  treasons,  stratagems,  and  spoils.  He 
alone  will  hope  to  frustrate  the  Divine  order. 
He  is  blind  to  the  Divine  revelation  that  has 
been  made  to  his  age.  Nor  is  this  law  of  pro- 
gression limited  in  its  horizon  to  the  present 
world.  As  Professor  Le  Conte  so  earnestly 
argues,  it  has  promise  for  the  life  that  now  is 
and  for  that  which  is  to  come. 

Coming  as  it  has  with  such  noble  and  re- 
splendent truths  to  rebuke  narrow  views,  to 
overturn  errors,  to  enlarge  our  thought  of  God 
and  nature,  it  is  no  wonder  that  to  Professor 
Le  Conte,  and  many  another,  evolution  seemed 
wholly  revolutionary  and  reforming — a  new 
orb,  in  whose  light  old  things  are  passed  away 
and  all  things  become  new.  But  perspective, 
which  reduces  all  things  to  their  true  propor- 
tion, has  been  silently  doing  with  evolution 
what  opposition  and  controversy  could  not  do. 
It  has  not  only  disclosed  the  true  values  of 
evolution,  but  it  has  also  revealed  its  inherent 
limitations  and  defects.  To  the  consideration 
of  these  very  important  limitations  and  defects 
let  us  now  turn  our  attention. 


90        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

VII 

The  most  marked  defect  of  evolution  is  in  its 
entire  failure  to  recognize  and  explain  person- 
ality, human  and  divine.  The  individual,  evo- 
lution knows  and  helps  to  explain;  the  indi- 
vidual as  a  person  it  does  not  know.  The  most 
that  evolution  can  say  of  this  subject-object, 
beside  whom  all  other  existences  pale  and  fade, 
is  this,  according  to  Professor  Le  Conte:  "Some 
portion  of  the  all-pervasive  energy  again  indi- 
viduates itself  more  and  more,  and  therefore 
acquires  more  and  more  a  kind  of  independent 
self-activity  which  reaches  its  completeness  in 
man  as  self-consciousness  and  free-will."5 

A  portion  of  the  all-pervasive  energy  which 
acquires  a  kind  of  independent  self-activity, 
and  finally  reaches  self -consciousness,  is  all  that 
evolution  can  offer  in  place  of  that  in-breathed 
spirit,  in  the  image  of  God,  that  creature 
crowned  with  glory  and  honor  whom  the  Old 
Testament  gives  us,  that  soul  whom  Jesus  sets 
over  against  the  whole  world,  that  being  "with 
large  discourse  of  reason  looking  before  and 
after,"  whom  Shakespeare  sings.  Between 
these  two  we  must  choose — the  portion  of 
energy  evolved  from  below  and  the  self-con- 
scious, supernatural,  autonomous  spirit  coming 
from  above. 


8  Evolution  and  Its  Relation  to  Religious  Thought,  p.  349. 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION  91 

With  man,  science  stops  and  philosophy  be- 
gins. Here  enters  the  philosopher.  No  ulti- 
mate problem  can  be  settled  without  him. 
Never  is  he  so  needed  as  in  an  age  of  science. 
Too  long  the  scientist  has  scorned  him,  as  he 
too  long  has  scorned  the  scientist.  The  stu- 
pendous self-assertiveness  of  evolution  (it  is  no 
less)  has  been  due  to  its  pitiful  ignorance  of 
philosophy.  Hardly  a  man  among  the  leading 
evolutionists  has  been  a  thorough  student  of 
philosophy.  Spencer  discloses  as  much  of  him- 
self in  his  autobiography.  Darwin,  Huxley, 
Tyndall — how  much  did  they  know  of  philos- 
ophy? Professor  Le  Conte  states  that  he  read 
a  little  philosophy,  but  never  with  much  in- 
terest. The  naive  ignoring  of  the  problem  of 
knowledge  on  the  part  of  evolution  philosophers 
is  damaging  evidence.  It  shows  the  panevolu- 
tion  philosophy  to  be  one  that  is  built  upon 
the  sands.  And  the  clouds  are  rising  and  the 
rain  descending  fast  upon  it.  Such  ignoring  of 
philosophy  is  an  astonishing  begging  of  a  prior 
question.  What  if  the  very  conception  of  evo- 
lution is  imposed  upon  nature  by  the  mind, 
instead  of  coming  out  of  nature  to  the  mind? 
What,  then,  becomes  of  panevolutionism?  It  is 
a  case  of  the  mind  evolved  saying  to  the  mat- 
ter that  evolved  it,  "Why  hast  thou  evolved 
me  thus?"  To  which  the  mindless  matter  can 


92        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

make  no  reply,  for  it  knows  not  the  speech  of 
reason.  This  is  not  only  tragedy;  it  is  comedy 
as  well. 

It  is  a  most  significant  fact  that  not  only  was 
this  scientist,  who  did  much  to  commend  evolu- 
tion to  modern  religious  thought  and  to  exhibit 
its  theological  values,  a  member  of  the  faculty 
of  the  University  of  California,  but  so  also  was 
the  philosopher  who  has  done  much  to  expose 
the  limits  of  evolution  and  to  uphold  the  sacred 
worth  of  personality  which  evolution  overshad- 
ows— a  modern  apostle  of  freedom  and  person- 
ality, Professor  George  H.  Howison.  Thus 
truth  corrects  and  balances  itself,  finding  ever 
its  own  eternal  equilibrium.  With  a  lance  as 
unerring  as  it  is  earnest,  Professor  Howison  has 
penetrated  to  the  fatal  weakness  of  the  evolu- 
tion philosophy  and  revealed  not  only  its  in- 
herent limitations,  but  its  absolute  dependence, 
as  a  law,  upon  the  mind.  For  him,  the  great 
fact  is  "man  the  spirit,  creative  rather  than 
created,  who  is  himself  the  proximate  source  of 
evolution,  the  cooperating  cause  and  lord  of 
that  world  where  evolution  has  its  course."6 
When  and  how  man,  this  lordly  spirit  from 
another  realm,  entered  the  process  of  animal 
evolution,  assuming  the  developed  physical  and 
nascent  mental  nature  prepared  through  long 

•  The  Limits  of  Evolution,  p.  55. 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION  93 

seons  for  him,  we  may  not  know.  Enough  that 
he  is  here,  explaining  evolution  rather  than  ex- 
plained by  evolution. 


VIII 

Not  only  does  unlimited  evolution  submerge 
human  personality;  it  also  extinguishes  Divine 
personality.  Spencer  is  the  true  architect  of  a 
consistent  philosophy  of  unlimited  evolution. 
His  conclusions  follow  his  premises.  Agnos- 
ticism is  the  very  best  that  can  be  made  out 
of  an  evolution  that  fills  the  whole  horizon. 
By  a  fine  act  of  his  Christian  faith,  won  long 
before  he  became  an  evolutionist,  Professor  Le 
Conte  transcended  the  bounds  of  evolution, 
and  by  positing  a  God  at  the  very  beginning  of 
the  evolutionary  process,  found  him  again 
throughout. 

But  to  interpret  God  (whom  the  soul  comes 
to  know  first  in  its  own  consciousness,  enlight- 
ened by  Christianity)  as  Professor  Le  Conte 
interpreted  him,  as  confined  to  nature  and 
coming  into  the  soul  through  nature,  inevit- 
ably leads  to  pantheism.  It  was  in  vain  that, 
prompted  by  his  ardent  devotion  to  the  Chris- 
tian revelation,  Professor  Le  Conte  strove  to 
save  his  doctrine  from  pantheism.  He  himself 
was  no  pantheist,  but  his  theology  is  pantheis- 


94        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

tic.  It  has  no  recognition,  no  place,  for  the 
transcendent  God,  the  God  of  Abraham,  of 
Isaac,  and  of  Jacob,  the  God  of  Jesus  Christ — 
the  Personal  Being,  above  nature  as  well  as  in 
nature. 

Unless  God  is  transcendent  as  well  as  im- 
manent we  are  caught  between  the  horns  of  a 
fatal  dilemma — deism  or  pantheism.  Can  tran- 
scendence and  immanence  both  be  true  of  God? 
This  is  the  great  issue  of  theology.  The  strict 
logician,  the  man  who  measures  truth  with  rule 
and  compass,  will  say,  "No;  both  cannot  be 
true;  our  rules  forbid."  But  a  larger  and  pro- 
founder  insight  answers,  "Both  may  be  true  of 
God,  both  must  be  true,  or  God  is  not  God." 
The  two  attributes,  as  Aristotle  said,7  are  not 
mutually  exclusive.  God  cannot  at  the  same 
time  be  both  good  and  bad,  but  he  can  be  both 
here  and  there,  both  above  and  within  his  uni- 
verse, though  he  cannot  be  identical  with  his 
universe  and  above  it.  Thus  Christianity,  af- 
fording in  its  higher  unity  a  synthesis  of  He- 
brew and  Greek  thought,  presents  him.  Thus 
the  souls  sensitive  to  the  deeper  harmonies  of 
truth  and  life  find  him.8 


•>  See  Weber,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  117. 

»  Professor  Le  Conte  himself  saw  this.  With  an  instinctive  denial  of  the 
pantheism  which  he  beckons  with  one  hand  and  waves  away  with  the 
other,  he  says:  "The  only  rational  view  is  to  accept  both  immanence  and 
personality,  even  though  we  cannot  clearly  reconcile  them"  (p.  337). 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION  95 

"Enthroned  above  the  world  although  He  sit, 
Still  is  the  world  in  Him  and  He  in  it, 

The  self-same  power  in  yonder  sunset  glows 
That  kindled  in  the  lords  of  sacred  writ. 

"Though  one  with  all  that  sense  or  soul  can  see, 
Not  prisoned  in  his  own  creation,  He, 

His  life  is  more  than  stars  or  winds  or  angels; 
The  sun  doth  not  contain  Him,  nor  the  sea."9 

IX 

The  limits  assigned  to  this  paper  permit  lit- 
tle more  than  the  mention  of  other  serious 
defects  of  evolution  theology.  Two  at  least  are 
conspicuous.  One  is  its  absolute  failure  to  ac- 
count for  Jesus  Christ.  Jesus,  as  the  re- 
ligious genius  of  the  race,  its  moral  and 
spiritual  prototype  and  ideal,  can  no  more  be 
explained  by  evolution  alone  than  a  flower 
by  the  soil  in  which  its  roots  are  hidden.  Sun 
as  well  as  soil  is  needed  to  account  for  the 
flower;  God  and  man  for  Jesus  Christ.  This 
priest  after  the  order  of  Melchizedek,  whom 
evolution  can  explain  only  as  a  racial  epiphe- 
nomenon,  a  freak  of  nature,  humanity  has 
greeted  as  its  revealer  and  goal,  by  whom 
alone  nature  and  human  nature  can  be  under- 
stood, and  through  whom,  by  means  of  the 
ethical  power  of  vicarious  sacrifice,  God  and 
man  are  reconciled. 

•  Richard  Hovey. 


96        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

In  Jesus  Christ  we  see  consummated  the  real 
force  which  has  effected  the  ascent  of  man, 
that  is,  the  ideal,  the  goal,  the  final  cause.  In- 
stead of  resident  forces  we  have  nonresident 
ideals.  No  one  recognizes  this  change  more 
clearly  than  Professor  Le  Conte.  "Organic 
evolution,"  he  says,  "is  pushed  onward  and 
upward  from  behind  and  below.  Human  evo- 
lution is  drawn  upward  and  forward  from  above 
and  in  front  by  the  attractive  force  of  ideals." 
Blessed  inconsistency  of  the  true  seer!  But 
manifestly  this  is  no  longer  evolution  at  all, 
according  to  Professor  Le  Conte's  own  defini- 
tion, in  which  "resident  forces"  is  one  of  the 
three  determining  factors.  Evolution  knows 
nothing  of  ideals;  Jesus  Christ  is  the  ideal. 
Evolution  knows  nothing  of  finalities;  Jesus 
Christ  is  a  finality. 

X 

Finally,  evolution  furnishes  a  misleading  and 
superficial  estimate  of  evil.  By  confounding 
moral  evil  with  physical  evil,  evolution  theol- 
ogy is  duped  into  accrediting  moral  evil  as  only 
good  in  disguise,  virtue  in  the  making,  foster- 
ing thus  a  conception  of  life  based  upon  a  half- 
truth  and  fraught  with  serious  consequences  to 
the  individual  and  to  society.  In  common  with 
all  the  philosophizing  evolutionists,  Professor 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION    97 

Le  Conte,  though  stoutly  protesting  against 
moral  evil  as  "sin,  moral  disease,  more  dread- 
fully contagious  and  deadly  than  any  organic 
disease,"  is  nevertheless  borne  on  by  the  cur- 
rent of  his  evolutionism  to  pronounce,  not  only 
its  possibility,  but  itself  "a  necessary  condition 
of  all  progress,  and  preeminently  so  of  moral 
progress."10  How  much  deeper,  saner,  truer  to 
human  fact  and  consciousness  is  Paul's  attitude 
toward  evil!  A  dark,  inexplicable  mystery  Paul 
conceives  it,  something  or  some  one  opposed  to 
God,  which  we  must  resist  with  all  our  might, 
because  its  very  nature  is  inherently  and  for- 
ever hateful,  which  man  by  the  grace  of  Christ 
can  destroy  but  can  never  subjugate,  and  yet 
whose  effects  an  all-wise  God,  an  overruling 
Providence,  doth  so  dispose  and  frustrate  that 
it  may  work  together  with  other  human  expe- 
riences for  good. 

As  evolution  knows  nothing  of  sin  as  such, 
so  it  can  know  nothing  of  regeneration  as  an 
extra-cosmic  process,  nor  of  that  Holy  Spirit 
through  whom  we  have  communion  with  the 
spiritual  realm. 

XI 

Such  are  some  of  the  values  and  defects,  the 
worths  and  wantages  of  the  theology  which 

10  Evolution  and  Its  Relation  to  Religious  Thought,  p.  373. 


98        RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

has  grown  up  alongside  of  agnosticism  and  ma- 
terialism— as  if  to  challenge  their  dim  and 
dismal  conclusions — out  of  the  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution. Wheat  and  tares  have  grown  together, 
but  the  harvest  day  of  separation  has  come. 
Let  us  gather  the  wheat  into  the  storehouses 
and  cast  the  chaff  away.  And  then  let  us  turn 
to  other  harvest  fields,  for  this  one  does  by  no 
means  exhaust  the  divine  resources. 

Were  evolution  to  be  disproved  in  toto  to- 
morrow, hardly  a  progressive  and  thoughtful 
student  of  theology  but  would  feel  himself  the 
poorer.  For  evolution  has  stimulated  and  bene- 
fited theology,  though  it  has  not  remade  it. 
Narrowed  horizons  never  suit  the  man  of  faith; 
he  will  not  willingly  part  with  any  true  gains 
that  have  been  gathered  in  any  field  of  God's 
truth.  Happily  no  such  result  is  to  be  antici- 
pated. Well-meaning  theologians  assure  us  from 
time  to  time  that  evolution  is  going  to  pieces. 
But  we  know  that  they  have  simply  caught 
the  echoes  of  the  disputes  of  evolutionists  over 
the  extent  of  natural  selection  or  the  range  of 
variation  or  some  other  side  issue.  Over  the 
main  issue  there  is  no  controversy.  Evolution 
is  virtually  established.  Nevertheless  the  whole 
tendency  to-day,  not  only  in  philosophy  and 
theology,  but  in  science  itself,  in  what  Lloyd 
Morgan  has  called  "the  evolution  of  evolu- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION     99 

tion,"  is  to  limit  the  boundaries  of  evolution. 
Those  bounds  are  fixed  at  least  at  the  spiritual 
nature  of  man.  No  universalizing  of  evolution 
can  account  for  personality.  Only  a  philosophy 
of  evolution,  not  a  science  of  evolution,  can 
venture  to  include  that  which  no  science  can 
measure  nor  philosophy  fathom — the  soul.  If 
the  contributions  of  evolution  to  theology  have 
proved  to  be  less  inclusive  and  reconstructive 
than  such  a  buoyant,  truth-devoted  spirit  as 
Professor  Le  Conte,  in  the  high  tide  of  con- 
quest, imagined,  we  are  not  the  less  grateful 
to  him  for  that  insight  of  faith  and  boundless- 
ness of  enthusiasm  which  discerned  and  her- 
alded the  theistic  character  of  the  new  truth. 

XII 

Yet  it  is  with  no  slight  sense  of  relief  and  re- 
assurance that  the  theologian  returns  to  the 
old,  old  verities  and  the  old,  old  problems  with 
the  consciousness  that  evolution  has  neither 
sunk  nor  solved  them.  What  should  we  do 
without  these  problems,  so  persistent,  so  en- 
gaging, so  disappointing  yet  so  fascinating,  so 
luminous  yet  so  insoluble?  It  is  a  noble  priv- 
ilege to  hold  high  converse  with  these  prob- 
lems daily  and  to  incite  fresh  and  earnest  minds 
to  face  them  devoutly  and  hopefully.  I  be- 


100      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

lieve  in  these  problems  of  theology.  Like  the 
Scriptures  themselves,  they  are  profitable  for 
teaching,  for  reproof,  for  correction,  for  dis- 
cipline which  is  in  righteousness.  Theology  is 
a  science  rather  than  a  system,  a  discipline 
rather  than  a  dogmatic  deliverance.  Religion 
would  be  but  a  scant  and  narrow  inclosure 
without  its  mysteries  and  its  problems.  Milk 
for  babes  the  church  has,  strong  meat  also  for 
strong  minds.  And  yet,  theology  is  not  wholly 
brawn  and  sinew.  No  more  than  philosophy 
is  she 

"harsh  and  crabbed,  as  dull  fools  suppose, 
But  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute." 

There  is  such  a  thing  as  experiential,  heart- 
to-heart  theology.  May  its  day  be  hastened! 
The  mood  of  the  hour,  which  disparages  and 
evades  theology,  will  pass.  Her  office  is  not 
yet  fulfilled.  The  future  beckons.  Nor  are 
her  problems  wholly  insoluble.  New  and 
large  glimpses  of  mist-enveloped  realities  ap- 
pear. New  viewpoints  open.  Especially  are 
we  of  to-day  aroused  to  fresh  anticipations  in 
the  application  of  the  Christocentric  principle 
to  theology.  Progress  rules  in  the  realm  of 
theology,  as  everywhere  throughout  God's  un- 
folding universe.  This,  evolution  has  helped 
us  to  understand.  With  new  faith  and  confi- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  EVOLUTION  101 

dence  theology  may  go  forward  to  her  task, 
exclaiming  with  Browning's  Paracelsus: 

"If  I  stoop 

Into  a  dark  tremendous  sea  of  cloud, 
It  is  but  for  a  time.     I  press  God's  lamp 
Close  to  my  breast;  its  splendor,  soon  or  late, 
Will  pierce  the  gloom:  I  shall  emerge  one  day." 


MYSTICISM  AS  EXPERIENCE 

IF  religion  were  not  so  deep,  so  manifold, 
and  so  persistent  a  reality,  it  might  be  possible 
to  fear  that  humanity  is  drifting  into  nonreli- 
gion.  Certainly,  old  conventions  and  stand- 
ards are  breaking  up.  Yet  in  the  very  midst 
of  the  disintegration  a  new  reconstruction  of 
social  Christianity  is  taking  place,  and  in  the 
swirl  and  current  of  secularism  and  hedonism 
a  secret  longing  for  spiritual  reality  is  making 
itself  felt.  Men  are  searching  after  the  mystic 
cord  that  leads  out  of  the  labyrinth  which  they 
have  constructed.  Religious  experience  finds 
its  highest,  or  at  least  its  most  intense  fulfill- 
ment and  expression  in  mysticism.  Renewed 
interest  in  historic  mysticism  is  significant,  but 
it  is  only  a  slight  indication  of  a  deeper  search. 
There  is  no  desire  to  revive  the  mysticism  of  a 
past  age.  Oriental  mysticism  is  turned  to  as 
a  help  rather  than  as  a  finality.2  The  mediaeval 
mystics  are  being  studied  as  religious  adepts, 
but  with  no  thought  of  imitation.  Emerson 
expressed  the  spirit  of  the  age  in  his  lines : 


1  From  The  Homiletic  Review,  July,  1913. 

8  Exception  must  be  made  of  certain  cults  now  flourishing  in  America. 
102 


MYSTICISM  AS  EXPERIENCE     103 

"I  like  a  church,  I  like  a  cowl, 
I  love  a  prophet  of  the  soul, 
Yet  not  for  all  his  faith  can  see 
Would  I  that  cowled  churchman  be.'* 

Nor  is  it  quite  Emerson's  type  of  mysticism 
that  the  age  desires.  Perhaps  there  is  no  bet- 
ter expression  of  the  attitude  of  our  time 
toward  mysticism  than  that  contained  in  a 
verse  of  George  Croly's  beautiful  hymn: 

"I  ask  no  dream,  no  prophet  ecstasies, 

No  sudden  rending  of  the  veil  of  clay, 
No  angel  visitant,  no  opening  skies; 

But  take  the  dimness  of  my  soul  away.'* 

What  will  take  the  dimness  of  the  soul  away? 
Not  a  new  religious  philosophy,  or  theology,  or 
psychology.  Not  a  new  civic  righteousness,  or 
a  new  social  order.  All  these  are  effects,  not 
causes.  They  do  not  reach  the  heart  of  our 
need.  The  hunger  after  reality,  the  longing  to 
find  the  central  source  and  secret  of  all  the  vast 
complex  of  forces  and  phenomena  in  which  we 
find  ourselves,  will  be  satisfied  by  nothing  less 
than  an  answer  that  conveys  a  direct  and  ex- 
perienced assurance.  Until  we  are  able  to  say: 
"This  truth,  this  life,  this  reality  is  mine,  my 
own  by  personal  experience,"  there  will  still  be 
dimness  of  soul,  insecurity,  vacillation.  Can 
anything  besides  mysticism  furnish  this  in- 
dubitable sense  of  certainty? 


104      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

I 

Must  we,  then,  to  gain  this  boon  of  assur- 
ance, take  with  it  all  that  mysticism  has  stood 
for  in  the  past? — its  asceticisms,  its  absolut- 
isms, its  seclusions,  its  visions,  its  trances,  its 
ecstasies?  Are  these  essential  and  inalienable 
parts  of  its  life?  Are  they  not  rather  accidents, 
attachments,  forms  of  expression  which  grew 
out  of  the  ideas  and  atmosphere  of  the  times 
in  which  successive  groups  of  mystics  flour- 
ished? It  would  be  impossible,  it  is  true,  to 
detach  Anthony  from  the  desert,  or  Saint 
Francis  from  Lady  Poverty,  or  Thomas  a 
Kempis  from  his  cell,  or  to  wrench  Jonathan 
Edwards  from  Calvinistic  New  England,  or 
Wordsworth  from  the  Lake  Country,  or  Emer- 
son from  Concord.  Environment,  intellectual, 
material,  religious,  must  have  much  to  do  in 
forming  the  type  and  expression  of  mystical 
experience;  yet  it  does  not  make  the  mystic. 
It  is  he  who  makes  his  environment  clothe  his 
inner  life. 

II 

When  we  come  to  search  for  the  very  soul 
and  core  of  mysticism  all  that  is  adventitious 
and  temporal,  however  close  it  may  seem  to  be 
wrought  into  the  very  texture  of  the  mystical 
life,  falls  away  and  we  see  the  real  singleness 


MYSTICISM  AS  EXPERIENCE     105 

and  simplicity  that  constitute  its  strength. 
Mysticism  may  be  resolved  into  three  funda- 
mental principles:  direct,  individual  experience 
of  spiritual  truth,  the  culture  of  the  soul  by 
contemplation,  the  dedication  of  the  self  in 
love.  The  other  mystic  truths  and  virtues 
cluster  about  these  three.  The  heart  of  mys- 
ticism, that  is,  is  personal  and  human.  As  such 
it  is  attainable  wherever  the  human  spirit  rises 
to  the  highest  level. 

The  nearer  we  get  to  the  pure  and  simple 
mysticism  which  realizes  these  cardinal  prin- 
ciples, the  nearer  we  come  to  the  type  that  is 
valid  in  every  age  and  that  meets  the  need  of 
our  own.  The  mysticism  of  Jesus  was  at  once 
the  deepest  and  strongest  that  the  world  has 
seen.  Yet  it  was  most  simple  and  normal, 
marred  by  no  extremes,  irradiated  by  no 
ecstasies.  It  seems  almost  prosaic  beside  that 
of  some  of  the  more  dramatic  of  the  mystics, 
and  yet  it  possessed  a  calm  vitality  and  power 
that  leave  theirs  almost  childish  by  compari- 
son. 

It  is  to  a  sane,  simple,  normal  mysticism,  as 
we  see  it  exemplified  in  Jesus — a  mysticism 
that  goes  below  all  outward  forms  and  expres- 
sions to  the  unchanging  substratum  of  the  re- 
ligious life,  and  yet  is  able  to  adjust  itself  to 
and  appropriate  the  larger  meaning  of  life 


106      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

which  has  come  to  our  age — that  we  must  look 
for  healing  and  hope  for  our  modern  life. 

Professor  Eucken  writes  as  follows  regarding 
the  mysticism  needed  to-day: 

"The  desire  for  the  presence  of  the  Infinite 
at  the  individual  point  may  be  characterized 
as  an  approximation  to  mysticism.  Indeed,  we 
need  both  a  metaphysic  and  a  mysticism;  but 
we  want  both  in  a  new  form,  not  in  the  old.  It 
seems  to  us  preposterous  to  declare  that  neces- 
sary demands  of  the  spiritual  life  are  finally 
disposed  of  because  the  older  solution  has  be- 
come inadequate.  If  man  does  not  in  some 
way  succeed  in  appropriating  the  spiritual  life, 
if  it  is  not  actively  present  as  a  whole  within 
him  and  animating  him,  then  his  relation  to 
the  spiritual  life  remains  forever  an  external 
one,  and  this  life  cannot  acquire  a  complete 
spontaneity  in  him,  can  never  become  a  genu- 
ine life  of  his  own.  But  the  older  mysticism 
was  the  offspring  of  a  worn-out  age,  which 
primarily  reflected  upon  quietness  and  peace, 
and  was  under  the  influence  of  a  philosophy 
that  sought  the  truth  in  striving  toward  the 
most  comprehensive  ideal,  and  saw  in  all  par- 
ticularity a  defect.  And  so,  to  be  completely 
merged  in  the  formless  infinite  could  be  re- 
garded as  the  culmination  of  life.  As  the 
spiritual  life  is  to  us,  on  the  contrary,  an  in- 


MYSTICISM  AS  EXPERIENCE     107 

creasing  activity  and  creation,  a  world  of  self- 
determining  activity,  so  its  being  called  to  life 
at  individual  points  is  a  rousing  of  life  to  its 
highest  energy;  in  this  also  a  continual  appro- 
priation is  necessary."3 

Here  is  a  word  of  rich  significance  as  to  the 
true  meaning  of  mysticism  and  its  relation  to 
the  spiritual  need  of  our  age.  It  reveals  at 
once  the  inadequacy  of  the  older  mysticism 
and  the  potency  and  promise  of  the  new. 

Ill 

From  such  a  mysticism,  sane,  strong,  sim- 
ple, will  come  the  relief  of  the  restlessness,  the 
confusions,  the  wrongs,  and  the  doubts  of  mod- 
ern life.  Nothing  else  will  suffice.  In  religion 
lies  the  key  to  the  solution  of  the  human 
problem,  and  mysticism  is  the  heart  of  reli- 
gion. 

To  be  more  explicit:  what  needs  most  to  be 
done  for  our  age  and  why  may  we  expect  mys- 
ticism to  accomplish  it? 

In  the  first  place,  the  spirit  of  mysticism 
alone  can  give  to  our  modern  life  the  unity, 
which  it  so  greatly  lacks.  Never  was  human- 
ity so  torn  and  dizzied  by  diverse  and  often 
conflicting  interests  as  now.  The  difficulty 
to-day  is  not  where  to  lay  one's  head,  but 

s  Life's  Basis  and  Life's  Ideal,  pp.  246,  247. 


108      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

when.  We  are  the  victims  of  an  overcomplex 
civilization.  As  Charles  Wagner  wrote  in  that 
wise  message  to  our  time,  The  Simple  Life: 

"The  complexity  of  our  life  appears  in  the 
number  of  our  material  needs.  It  is  a  fact 
universally  conceded  that  our  needs  have 
grown  with  our  resources.  This  is  not  an  evil 
in  itself,  for  the  birth  of  certain  needs  is  often 
a  mark  of  progress.  .  .  .  But  if  certain  needs 
exist  by  right  and  are  desirable,  there  are 
others  whose  effects  are  fatal,  which,  like  para- 
sites, live  at  our  expense."4 

There  is  no  escape  from  this  tyranny  of  over- 
civilization,  from  the  pressure  of  problems  and 
the  hopeless  maze  of  conflicting  interests  and 
activities,  unless  we  can  find  a  unifying  power 
clear  enough  and  strong  enough  to  introduce 
self-guidance,  order,  mastery,  into  the  turmoil 
and  confusion.5 


« Chap.  i. 

8  There  is,  to  be  sure,  a  kind  of  skillful,  superficial  handling  of  life  which 
has  no  real  unifying  power.  "My  artificial  self  becomes  the  only  self  I  am 
acquainted  with.  This  self  is  built  up  according  to  self-conscious  stand- 
ards of  criticism,  universal  in  character,  derived  largely  from  my  social 
consciousness,  and  passing  current  in  the  world,  just  because  I  have  thus 
duly  universalized  myself.  It  is  a  well-known  selfhood — known  in  fact 
through  and  through,  empty  of  mystery — well  behaved,  also,  conven- 
tionally confirmed  in  its  own  successful  technic  of  self -handling,  the  man 
of  the  city  and  of  the  world,  betraying  at  every  point  the  failure  of  privacy, 
of  recourse  to  the  individual  I  am,  the  sealing  of  spontaneity,  the  formal 
hardening  of  the  heart,  the  unhumanizing  of  men  by  over-contact  with 
humanity,  the  strain  of  general  attitudes  not  wholly  naturalized  in  one- 
self."— Hocking,  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  p.  417. 


MYSTICISM  AS  EXPERIENCE     109 

It  is  a  fascinating  world  in  which  we  live 
to-day.  Art,  science,  nature,  literature,  amuse- 
ments, social  life  permeate  all  social  strata  and 
offer  more  and  more  to  stimulate  and  attract 
minds  of  all  types  and  tastes.  The  modern 
man  is  dazzled  by  the  wares  and  allurements 
of  modern  life.  He  is  easily  caught  in  the 
mesh  of  the  external  world,  and  loses  his  self- 
identity  in  it.  Many  of  these  interests  are 
unselfish  and  altruistic,  and  the  better  man 
responds  to  the  appeal  of  these,  and  in  so  far 
as  he  lends  himself  to  them  is  enlarged  and 
ennobled  by  them.  Yet  he  does  not  get  down 
beneath  them  to  the  secret  of  his  selfhood,  nor 
find  the  one  thing  that  he  as  a  self  can  best 
be  and  do.  Doubtless  it  is  his  own  fault  chiefly, 
yet  it  is  due  in  part  to  the  complexity  and  ex- 
ternalism  of  the  life  in  which  he  finds-  himself. 
"To  what  end,  then,"  questions  Schleiermacher, 
"this  greater  power  over  matter  if  it  does  not 
further  the  real  life  of  the  spirit?"6 

There  is  no  way  out  of  this  externalism,  no 
way  to  find  oneself  and  thus  to  take  command 
of  the  outer  life  and  reduce  it  to  unity,  except 
to  find  and  enter  into  the  spirit  life,  the  world 
of  personality  where  our  true  selfhood  lies. 
Thence  having  found  the  "perfect  law  of  lib- 
erty," one  can  master  the  outer  life  and  re- 

6  Monologues,  chap.  iii. 


110      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

duce  it  to  unity  and  make  it  serve  and  embody 
the  life  of  the  spirit.7 

From  a  superficial  viewpoint  the  mystical 
principle  seems  extremely  ill  adapted  to  serve 
as  unifier  and  organizer  of  life's  activities.  It 
appears  to  be  so  absorbing,  so  other-worldly, 
as  to  inhibit  other  activities  and  interests  and 
reduce  life  to  a  tame,  angelic  tete-a-tete  with 
the  Infinite.  Von  Hiigel,  in  his  discussion  of 
this  difficulty,  quotes  the  following  from  the 
Danish  mystic  Kierkegaard:  "The  absolute  is 
cruel,  for  it  demands  all,  while  the  relative  ever 
continues  to  demand  some  attention  from  us  "8 
But  the  attention  that  the  absolute  demands 
is  one  that  can  act  through  the  relative.  That 
which  is  best  in  the  finite  is  enhanced  by  means 
of  an  undercurrent  of  devotion  to  the  Infinite. 
Love  of  God  does  not  conflict  with  love  of 
neighbor,  but  increases  it.  The  only  way  to 
serve  God  is  by  serving  men.  There  are  times, 
the  mystic  holds,  when  the  whole  and  undi- 
vided attention  must  be  concentrated  on  the 
Absolute,  but  those  periods  need  occupy  but  a 
limited  amount  of  time.  The  Absolute  does 
demand  all  in  the  sense  that  the  time  given  to 
"secular  pursuits"  (a  phrase  entirely  alien  to 


7  Compare  the  chapter  on  "The  Personalizing  of  Life,"  in  my  Personal- 
ity and  the  Christian  Ideal. 

•  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  ii,  353. 


MYSTICISM  AS  EXPERIENCE    111 

the  mystic  mind),  recreation,  everything,  shall 
all  be  undergirt  and  transfused  with  devotion 
to  the  Absolute.  As  Jacob  Boehme  has  it: 
"Let  thy  hands  or  head  be  at  labor,  thy  heart 
ought  nevertheless  to  rest  in  God."9  Such  a 
mysticism  as  that  cannot  fail  to  give  unity  to 
life,  selecting,  ordering,  harmonizing  all  pur- 
suits and  interests  and  filling  them  all  with  the 
one  pervasive  and  passionate  interest,  God. 
Lives  thus  unified,  as  we  have  known  them  or 
known  of  them,  have  not  been  lives  out  of 
touch  with  the  modern  world  on  its  best  side, 
nor  cold  to  human  interests  and  joys,  but  lives 
of  exceptional  breadth,  warmth,  and  vitality, 
permeated  through  and  through  with  a  single 
purpose  and  attuned  to  one  all-harmonizing 
note.  We  find,  that  is,  that  mysticism  has  the 
power  not  only  to  unify,  but  by  that  very  fact 
the  power  to  enlarge. 

IV 

The  new  mysticism  alone  can  give  to  life 
freedom  and  fullness.  The  older  mysticism 
lacked  here.  It  gave  depth,  intensity,  strength 
to  life,  but  not  fullness.  Heroic,  clear- visioned, 
large-minded,  as  the  mystics  of  the  Middle 
Ages  and  those  of  the  Reformation  were,  they 
were  a  little  afraid  of  life.  They  shrank  from 

9  The  Supersenxual  Life,  p.  65. 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

its  possibilities;  they  distrusted  its  attractions. 
They  found  the  right  key  to  life,  simplicity, 
but  they  did  not  use  it  to  unlock  all  of  the 
chambers  in  which  great  treasure  lay  hidden. 
They  preferred  the  humbler  rooms  and  the 
lowest  places.  They  knew  that  all  things  were 
theirs,  but  they  did  not  take  possession  of 
them.  No  one  can  be  a  mystic  in  any  age 
who  does  not  share  their  principle  of  values. 
They  knew  that  one  has  no  right  to  the  good 
things  of  the  world  who  does  not  take  them  as 
a  son  of  God;  but  they  did  not  realize  how 
much  one  may  rightly  appropriate  in  gratitude. 
Having  the  one  thing  needful,  they  did  not 
much  concern  themselves  with  the  many  things 
lawful. 

The  spirit  of  limitation,  even  though  it  be 
self -limitation,  does  not  fit  our  modern  world; 
we  have  come  to  know  too  well  the  goodness 
and  largeness  of  life.  Unless  the  modern  mys- 
tic can  take  life  in  its  amplitude,  mold  it,  master 
it,  he  cannot  exert  the  influence  that  the  mys- 
tic of  the  Middle  Ages  possessed  under  another 
Weltanschauung.  Can  he  be  true  to  the  mysti- 
cal ideal  and  yet  swing  out  into  a  fuller  tide 
of  life? 

Perhaps  we  shall  best  find  our  answer  by 
turning  to  one  or  two  of  the  typical  mystics  of 
our  own  time.  Probably  no  man  in  the  later 


MYSTICISM  AS  EXPERIENCE     113 

American  pulpit  has  been  more  distinctly  mys- 
tical, both  in  his  personality  and  his  message, 
than  Phillips  Brooks.  His  face,  his  voice,  his 
manner,  his  utterance,  were  all  those  of  a 
mystic;  and  a  mystic  we  find  him  as  portrayed 
in  his  biography.  Yet  how  rich  and  full  a  life 
he  lived,  so  many-sided,  so  outreaching  and 
varied  in  its  interests  and  sympathies — a  life 
enriched  by  art,  travel,  music,  literature,  so- 
ciety— full  to  the  banks  with  joy  and  service! 
These  volumes,  replete  with  movement  and 
fascination,  are  indicative  of  the  nature  of  the 
life  they  record.  Yet  the  most  attractive  parts 
are  not  those  that  chronicle  the  outward  con- 
tacts and  influences,  but  those  that  give  us 
glimpses  of  the  inward  development.  The 
thoughts  recorded,  for  example,  in  those  preg- 
nant years  in  the  theological  seminary  at 
Alexandria,  and  the  years  following,  are  as 
truly  the  reflections  of  a  mystic  as  are  those  of 
the  Imitatio  Christi  or  the  Diary  of  David 
Brainerd.  Yet  how  great  the  contrast!  Here, 
for  instance,  is  a  typical  aspiration  in  verse: 

"Oh,  for  a  wider  life  where  flower 

With  more  of  breath  gains  more  of  bloom; 
With  more  of  peace  since  more  of  power, 
And  more  of  rest  since  more  of  room."10 

">A.  V.  G.  Allen,  Life  and  Letters  of  Phillips  Brooks,  i,  239. 


114      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

The  second  volume  contains  a  picture  of  Bishop 
Brooks'  study  in  Boston.  Contrast  its  furni- 
ture, its  statuary,  its  pictures,  its  shelves  of 
books,  its  atmosphere  of  comfort  and  culture 
with  the  bare,  cold,  comfortless  cell  of  Henry 
Suso,  with  its  crucifix  and  instruments  of  self- 
torture.  Yet  each  was  the  retreat  of  a  soul  in 
communion  with  God. 

Almost  equally  radiant  in  the  wealth  of  its 
human  interests  and  influences,  as  well  as  in 
its  mystical  quality,  was  the  life  of  that  win- 
some modern  woman,  Alice  Freeman  Palmer, 
as  it  is  so  sympathetically  and  skillfully  de- 
scribed by  Professor  Palmer.  Hers  was  a 
habit  of  life  in  striking  contrast  with  that  of 
Saint  Teresa  or  Catherine  of  Siena.  Little  of 
its  ministrant  hours  was  given  to  direct,  unin- 
terrupted intercourse  with  God;  and  yet,  "He 
was  her  steady  companion,  so  naturally  a  part 
of  her  hourly  thought  that  she  attached  little 
consequence  to  specific  occasions  of  inter- 
course."11 Doubtless  it  is  only  the  rarer  and 
more  fortunate  souls  that  can  maintain  so 
deep  and  steady  a  spiritual  life  with  so  little 
of  seclusion  and  effort.  And  yet  does  not  such 
a  life  reveal  the  very  highest  and  finest  kind  of 
mysticism? 

It  is  not  always  easy  to  detect  the  modern 

»  P.  347. 


MYSTICISM  AS  EXPERIENCE     115 

mystic,  vital,  active,  absorbed  in  service,  in 
fresh  touch  with  all  that  is  going  on  about  him, 
yet  nourishing  his  soul  at  a  well  of  water  within 
springing  up  into  everlasting  life — John  Bige- 
low,  journalist,  diplomat,  art  critic,  "first  citi- 
zen of  New  York,"  yet  feeding  his  soul  on  the 
writings  of  Swedenborg  and  in  attendance  at 
the  little  New  Church  chapel  on  East  Thirty- 
fifth  Street;12  Dr.  Grenfell,  sailor,  physician, 
friend  of  a  forsaken  people  to  whom  he  has 
brought  untold  material  as  well  as  spiritual 
good  with  his  herd  of  reindeer  and  his  plans 
for  social  and  economic  betterment,  yet  a  stu- 
dent and  lover  of  the  Scripture  and  a  devoted 
follower  of  the  Master;13  Helen  Keller,  scholar, 
woman  of  culture,  bathed  in  a  mystic  faith 
that  is  the  deepest  secret  of  her  marvelous  un- 
folding— such  lives  as  these  reveal  to  us  how 
real  and  beautiful  is  the  presence  of  the  mysti- 
cal life  in  our  so  prosaic  and  material  age. 

The  mystics  are  everywhere  still,  scattered 
through  all  the  ranks  and  ways  of  human  life. 
One  of  the  most  illuminating  results  of  the 
inquiries  conducted  by  Starbuck,  Coe,  Pratt, 

12  Compare  John  Bigelow,  The  Bible  That  Was  Lost  and  Is  Found. 

«  In  his  Noble  Lectures,  The  Adienture  of  Life,  Dr.  Grenfell,  while  show- 
ing on  every  page  the  practical  and  common  sense  turn  of  his  mind,  has 
nevertheless  presented  an  intimate  revelation  of  a  vital  mystical  fellow- 
ship with  the  living  Christ,  of  whom  he  says  at  the  close:  "There  is  no  life 
but  the  life  which  comes  from  him;  to  me,  as  I  have  said,  the  rest  is  merely 
existence." 


116      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

and  other  students  of  religious  psychology,  is 
the  revelation  they  have  made  of  the  wealth 
and  variety  of  mystical  experience  all  about 
us.  Who  would  look  for  a  mystic  on  the  police 
force?  And  yet  he  has  been  found,  writes  Mr. 
Trine: 

"I  know  an  officer  of  our  police  force  who 
has  told  me  that  many  times  when  off  duty, 
and  on  his  way  home  in  the  evening,  there 
comes  to  him  such  a  vivid  and  vital  realiza- 
tion of  his  oneness  with  this  infinite  Power, 
and  this  Spirit  of  peace  so  takes  hold  of  and 
fills  him,  that  it  seems  as  if  his  feet  could 
hardly  keep  to  the  pavement,  so  buoyant  and 
so  exhilarated  does  he  become  by  reason  of 
this  inflowing  tide."14 

Men  and  women,  humble  and  unknown, 
have  at  the  touch  of  the  religious  investigator 
disclosed  phases  of  mystic  experience,  so  real, 
so  individual,  often  so  tender  and  beautiful  as 
to  awaken  our  surprise  and  wonder.  It  is  as 
if  a  veil  had  suddenly  been  drawn  back  from 
commonplace  human  beings,  revealing  a  spirit- 
ual individuality  that  we  had  never  dreamed 
was  there.  Have  any  romances  of  our  day 
been  more  fascinating  than  those  which  Har- 
old Begbie  has  uncovered  to  us?15 


"  William  James,  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  393. 
18  Twice  Born  Men;  Souls  in  Action. 


MYSTICISM  AS  EXPERIENCE     117 

Idiosyncrasy,  incongruity,  individualism, 
doubtless  color  many  of  these  mysticisms,  but 
underneath  there  is  a  current  of  strong  and 
sane  reality.  Not  one  of  these  experiences  but 
gives  to  the  life  it  lights  greater  freedom  and 
fullness.  For  mysticism  is  in  its  very  nature 
expansive.  It  enlarges  the  soul  vertically  and, 
when  blended  with  intellectual  strength,  edu- 
cation, and  culture,  horizontally  as  well.  Truly, 
as  Shakespeare  has  it, 

"out  of  these  convertites 
There  is  much  matter  to  be  heard  and  learned."16 

»  As  You  Like  It,  Act  V,  Scene  II. 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE  AND 
CHRISTIAN  UNITY1 

ANY  fair-minded  observer,  ignorant  of  the 
history  and  present  condition  of  the  Christian 
Church,  upon  reading  the  New  Testament 
would  say,  "Here  surely  is  a  religion  so  simple, 
so  vital,  so  rational,  and  so  spiritual  that  its 
followers  can  have  no  possible  occasion  or  ex- 
cuse for  quarreling  or  disfellowshipping  one  an- 
other." Are  we,  then,  Christians? 

One  of  our  most  familiar  and  beloved  hymns 
has  as  its  opening  line:  "Blest  be  the  tie  that 
binds."  What  is  that  tie?  Is  it  a  doctrinal  tie, 
or  a  sentimental  tie?  It  is  neither.  It  is  the 
tie  of  Christian  experience. 

One  knows  very  well  when  he  has  it  and 
when  he  shares  it.  It  is  a  life  in  his  soul  and 
thus  a  tie  that  binds  him  to  others.  In  the 
strength  and  hope  of  it  he  takes  up  the  task  of 
winning  himself  and  of  making  this  a  better 
world,  and  because  of  it  he  joins  heart  and 
hand  with  his  fellow  Christian,  that  together 
they  may  take  possession  of  the  world  for  God 
in  the  name  of  Christ,  for  this  too  is  a  part  of 
the  experience.  It  is  in  some  way  bound  up 

»  Reprinted  from  The  Biblical  World,  vol.  xlv,  No.  4,  April,  1915. 
118 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE        119 

with  a  personal,  spiritual  Being  who  is  greater 
than  the  experience  and  from  whom  it  comes. 
All  this  is  very  clear  and  real.  But  when  these 
convinced  and  united  experients,  these  sharers 
of  a  new  faith  and  a  new  life,  begin  to  define; 
trouble  begins.  One  says  his  experience  means 
so  and  so;  this  is  the  doctrine  and  it  involves 
these  other  doctrines;  and  another  and  an- 
other say,  "Yes,  so  it  is  to  us,  so  it  must  be." 
But  another  says:  "It  does  not  look  so  to  me, 
you  must  be  wrong;  this  is  the  meaning,  this 
the  doctrine." 

Or,  these  sharers  of  a  common  experience, 
finding  that  they  need  symbols  and  forms  of 
worship  and  methods  of  organization  to  main- 
tain this  inner  life,  institute  certain  rites  and 
lay  down  certain  forms  of  government  and  dis- 
cipline. And  having  different  ideas  and  pref- 
erences they  begin  to  diverge,  and  as  they 
become  centered  upon  the  externals  rather 
than  the  reality  that  underlies  them,  differ- 
ences lead  to  disagreement,  separation,  strife. 

And  then  one  party  begins  to  call  another 
"heretics,  schismatics,  enemies  of  orthodoxy." 
Thus  division  and  subdivision  occur.  Sect 
creates  sect,  denomination  creates  denomina- 
tion, party  creates  party.  And  here  we  are. 
It's  an  old  story  and  a  sad  one.  But  the  main 
question  is:  What  are  we  going  to  do  about  it? 


120      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

Well,  the  first  thing  to  do  is  manifestly  to 
go  back,  or,  rather,  to  go  down,  to  the  funda- 
mental reality  itself  and  there  to  find  again 
our  one  foundation,  our  common  faith,  our  ele- 
mental tie  that  binds.  How  sure  that  founda- 
tion is,  how  unshakable,  how  imperishable,  we 
have  forgotten — lost  in  the  maze  of  our  creeds, 
our  theologies,  and  our  polities. 

"But  are  there  not  many  forms  of  Christian 
experience?"  Surely,  there  are.  As  many  and 
varied  they  are  as  the  shades  of  light  in  the 
sunset  sky  or  the  colorings  of  the  rose.  But 
each  is  a  form  of  the  one  common  experience,  a 
manifestation  of  the  one  Spirit,  just  as  each 
color  consists  of  broken  rays  of  the  one  light. 
The  man  of  the  sudden  conversion  may  not 
say  to  him  of  the  slow  unfolding,  "I  have  no 
need  of  you."  Nor  may  he  of  the  gradual 
growth  say  to  him  of  the  swift  surrender,  "I 
have  no  need  of  you."  For  we  are  all  made  to 
drink  of  one  and  the  same  Spirit.  And  when 
we  go  together  to  the  same  Fountain  in  prayer 
we  learn  the  common  source  of  our  faith  and 
our  common  brotherhood. 

Another  objector  arises.  "Is  not  life,  con- 
duct, character,"  he  asks,  "rather  than  expe- 
rience, the  more  vital  thing?"  "What  is  the 
worth  of  an  experience  if  conduct  contradicts 
it?"  The  question  is  certainly  pertinent.  One 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE        121 

is  reminded  of  the  old  Negro  in  the  prayer- 
meeting  who,  as  the  story  goes,  arose  and  said: 
"Bred'ren,  I'se  broken  all  de  commandments, 
but  thank  de  Lord,  I'se  got  my  'ligion  still." 
There  is  not  much  value  in  that  kind  of  reli- 
gious experience,  it  must  be  admitted.  But 
that  is  hardly  a  typical  working  of  Christian 
experience.  If  it  were,  Christianity  wouldn't 
have  lasted  long.  Normal  Christian  experience 
reveals  itself  in  life.  It  issues  in  right  conduct, 
as  the  flower  passes  into  the  fruit.  Automati- 
cally? No.  Nothing  happens  automatically 
in  the  spiritual  realm.  But  faith  nerves  the  will 
and  braces  the  determination,  and  out  of  the 
purified  heart  flow  pure  deeds.  Paul  ex- 
pressed the  secret  of  it  all  when  he  said:  "If 
any  man  is  in  Christ,  he  is  a  new  creature; 
old  things  are  passed  away,  all  things  are  be- 
come new."  "In  Christ."  Can  you  analyze 
that?  Can  you  define  it?  That  is  experience, 
not  theology.  Out  of  that  experience,  life;  in 
it,  unity;  after  it,  freedom.  I  see  no  way  to  a 
unified  church,  a  revitalized  Christianity,  a 
convinced  world,  but  this:  the  recovery  and 
recognition  of  the  one  fundamental  Christian 
experience,  or,  if  you  prefer,  Christian  faith— 
the  two  are  practically  the  same — underlying 
all  creeds,  theologies,  cults,  enterprises. 

But  one  thing  is  needful.     Oh,  all  ye  fierce 


RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

warriors  of  the  faith,  Athanasians  and  Arians, 
Augustinians  and  Pelagians,  Abelards  and 
Bernards,  Luthers  and  Zwinglis,  Calvins  and 
Servetuses,  Reformers  and  Remonstrants,  An- 
glicans and  Dissenters,  Puritans  and  Quakers, 
Old  School  and  New  School,  Conservatives  and 
Liberals,  but  one  thing  is  needful — faith,  love, 
Christ  in  the  soul,  Christian  experience.  Every 
Christian  knows  what  that  reality  is  and  what 
it  means,  though  it  can  be  defined  about  as 
accurately  as  life,  or  light,  or  electricity,  or 
anything  else  that  is  too  real  for  definition. 

The  trouble  has  come — has  it  not? — from 
substituting  something  closely  connected  with 
this  great  uniting  reality  for  the  reality  itself. 
The  church,  for  instance,  in  which  this  expe- 
rience occurs,  has  been  substituted  for  the  ex- 
perience; the  Bible,  with  which  the  experience 
is  linked,  has  been  substituted  for  it;  and  often 
a  doctrine  about  Christ,  for  Christ  himself.  It 
is  perfectly  natural  and  understandable  that  a 
medium  or  a  definition  of  a  reality  should  thus 
be  substituted  for  the  reality  itself;  but  the 
result  is  confusion,  trouble,  dissension,  disaster. 

What  then?  Is  theology  of  no  account?  Is 
Christian  doctrine  valueless?  On  the  con- 
trary, as  we  have  found,  theology,  which  is  the 
interpretation  of  Christian  experience,  is  of  the 
utmost  value.  It  grows  out  of  experience  as 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE        123 

the  branch  grows  out  of  the  stock  and  is  as 
necessary  to  its  life. 

Christian  Experience  might  well  address 
Christian  Doctrine  in  the  language  of  Christ 
in  the  Fourth  Gospel  to  his  disciples :  "I,  Expe- 
rience, am  the  Vine;  ye,  Doctrines,  are  the 
branches.  As  the  branch  cannot  bear  fruit  of 
itself  except  it  abide  in  the  vine,  so  neither  can 
ye  except  ye  abide  in  me.  If  any  doctrine 
abide  not  in  me,  it  is  cast  forth  as  a  branch 
and  is  withered  and  men  gather  them  and  cast 
them  into  the  fire  and  they  are  burned." 

Precisely  that  has  happened  to  a  good  many 
doctrines  in  our  day.  But  when  doctrine  abides 
in  experience,  when  it  represents  the  life  of  the 
spirit  expressing  itself  in  intellectual  leaf  and 
blossom  and  fruit,  it  is  needful  and  nourishing. 
Through  it  experience  itself  is  enriched  and 
advanced. 

Let  me  offer  an  illustration.  The  disciple 
who  wrote  our  Fourth  Gospel  was  "far  ben,"  as 
the  Scotch  would  say,  in  his  experience  of 
Christ.  He  knew  what  it  was  to  abide  in  the 
living  Vine.  He  was  also  a  student,  a  pro- 
found thinker.  In  the  course  of  his  study  and 
reflection  he  had  fallen  in  with  a  philosophical 
concept,  current  in  his  time,  which  is  known 
as  the  Logos.  With  that  profound  philosophic 
conception  he  prefaced  his  interpretation  of  the 


124      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

person  and  life  of  his  Lord  in  those  calm,  ma- 
jestic words  that  take  one  to  the  very  heart  of 
the  secret  of  all  existence:  "In  the  beginning 
was  the  Logos  and  the  Logos  was  with  God 
and  the  Logos  was  of  God."  "Through  him 
[not  by  him]  were  all  things  made.  .  .  .  And  the 
Logos  became  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us  and 
we  beheld  his  glory,  glory  as  of  the  Only- 
begotten  of  the  Father — full  of  grace  and 
truth."  There  is  theology  at  its  very  best,  rev- 
erent, deep,  moving — theology  saturated  in  ex- 
perience and  pervaded  with  the  Spirit;  and 
this  luminous  conception  runs  through  all  the 
wonderful  chapters  that  follow.  This  illus- 
trates how  our  ideas  enter  into  our  experiences 
and  our  experiences  into  our  ideas.  A  new 
idea  is  often  like  a  shaft  of  light  thrown  into  a 
darkened  room  where  we  were  dwelling  in  the 
midst  of  realities  that  we  knew  and  felt  and 
yet  did  not  clearly  see.  In  its  light  we  see  as 
well  as  touch  divine  things. 

Apply  this  to  the  Bible  as  a  whole.  Anyone 
who  has  lived  at  all  responsively  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  Bible  knows  that  it  is  a  sacred  and 
life-giving  book,  knows,  indeed,  that  it  is  in- 
spired. As  Professor  George  Mooar  used  to 
say,  "The  Bible  is  inspired  because  it  is  inspir- 
ing." And  yet  one  may  hold  a  theory  of  in- 
spiration which  stands  in  the  way  of  his  fullest 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE        125 

appreciation  of  the  largest  meanings  and  deep- 
est values  of  the  Bible,  a  theory  which  reduces, 
or  tends  to  reduce,  all  its  sunlit  peaks  and 
shadowed  valleys  to  one  dead  level.  Such  was 
my  own  conception  as  a  boy,  and  I  diligently 
plowed  through  all  the  dreary  chapters  of  Le- 
viticus and  Numbers,  spending  time  which 
might  a  thousand  times  better  have  been 
spent  upon  the  Psalms  and  the  Gospels,  be- 
cause I  supposed  it  was  all  a  necessary  part  of 
one  miraculously  given  revelation.  I  have 
since  come  to  see  that  when  one  accepts  the 
guidance  of  the  Spirit  in  his  own  mind  and 
soul  he  will  come  to  understand  that  certain 
parts  of  the  Bible  are  incomparably  nobler 
than  others,  that  it  contains  a  progressive  and 
not  a  static  revelation  and  is  a  book  of  religion 
and  not  of  science  or  casuistry  or  predictions. 

Upon  the  basis  of  an  idea  of  inspiration 
wholly  out  of  keeping  with  the  spirit  and 
teaching  of  the  Bible  itself,  doctrines  have 
been  extracted  from  it  which  were  never  there. 
For  instance,  I  for  one  am  as  certain  that  no 
such  doctrine  as  the  Augustinian  and  Calvin- 
istic  doctrine  of  the  Fall  of  Man  in  Adam  as 
essential  to  faith  is  taught  in  the  Bible  as  I  am 
certain  that  the  doctrine  that  God  is  our  Father 
and  we  his  children  is  taught  there.  There  is, 
to  be  sure,  a  Fall  story  in  the  book  of  Genesis, 


126      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

full  of  suggestive  truth,  but  no  doctrine  of  the 
Fall.  There  is  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  a 
very  striking  parallel  between  a  rabbinical  doc- 
trine of  the  universality  of  the  Fall  and  that  of 
Redemption  in  Christ.  Paul  was  not  teaching 
Adam  but  Christ.  If  he  were  to  come  back 
to-day,  he  might  well  ask:  "How  did  you  man- 
age to  make  so  much  of  that  doctrine  of  the 
Fall  out  of  the  letter  I  wrote  to  the  Romans? 
That  Fall  doctrine  was  not  mine;  I  simply 
took  it  to  make  more  real  the  truth  that  I 
was  teaching — the  greatness  and  completeness  of 
Christ's  redemption"2 

There  are,  it  is  true,  certain  simple,  cardinal 
doctrines  growing  directly  out  of  experience, 
such  as  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  the  Redemp- 
tive Personality  of  Christ,  the  guidance  of  the 
Spirit,  the  Life  Immortal,  upon  which  we  all 
agree.  It  is  upon  these,  next  to  faith  itself, 
that  we  should  throw  our  common  emphasis. 
Upon  less  essential  doctrines  we  should  agree 
to  differ. 

That  is  not  saying,  let  me  repeat,  that  it 
does  not  matter  what  we  think  about  doc- 
trine. It  does  matter.  It  is  of  great  concern, 

J  If  the  champion  of  exactness  wishes  to  press  the  point  by  asking:  "Paul 
would  not  have  used  the  doctrine  of  the  Fall  in  Adam  if  he  had  not  be- 
lieved it,  would  he?"  I  would  answer:  "Doubtless  he  did  accept  it,  but 
that  does  not  make  it  his  doctrine.  There  is  no  reason  to  think  he  would 
ever  have  referred  to  it  except  as  a  means  of  enforcing  his  teaching  con- 
cerning Christ." 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE        127 

it  seems  to  me,  that  for  the  sake  of  the  honor 
of  Christianity,  for  the  sake  of  young  and  in- 
quiring minds  growing  up  about  us,  we  have 
the  clearest,  sanest,  most  reasonable  theology 
possible,  a  theology  that  reflects  the  best 
thought  and  the  best  knowledge  of  our  time— 
while  anchored  fast  to  the  fundamental  reali- 
ties of  the  New  Testament. 

But  some  things  matter  vastly  more  than 
others  that  matter  much.  And  the  thing  that 
always  matters  most,  and  especially  just  now, 
is  that  all  Christians,  New  Theology  and  Old 
Theology,  of  every  sect  and  denomination, 
stand  together  upon  the  one  fundamental  re- 
lation to  Christ,  where  there  is  neither  Old 
Theology  nor  New  Theology,  Orthodox  nor 
Liberal,  but  Christ  is  all  and  in  all. 

"Love,"  says  the  great  apostle,  "beareth  all 
things."  It  should  be  able  to  bear  doctrinal 
differences.  An  increasing  number  of  us  are, 
I  think,  determined  that  doctrinal  differences 
shall  not  shut  us  away  from  our  brethren.  It 
is  always  possible  to  get  the  better  of  the  man 
who  tries  to  exclude  you,  if  it  is  done  in  the 
spirit  and  manner  of  Edwin  Markham's  lines: 

"He  drew  a  circle  that  shut  me  out — 
Heretic,  rebel,  a  thing  to  flout. 
But  Love  and  I  had  the  wit  to  win; 
We  drew  a  circle  that  took  him  in." 


128      RELIGION  AS  EXPERIENCE 

It  is  no  time  to  cherish  misunderstandings 
and  alienations  and  suspicions,  when  the  forces 
of  materialism  and  indifferentism  and  immoral- 
ity are  flooding  in  upon  us  as  they  are  to-day. 
When  men  and  women  are  drifting  from  their 
moorings  and  out  upon  a  sea  of  loneliness  and 
hopelessness,  when  young  men  and  women  are 
giving  way  to  doubt  and  pessimism,  when  foes 
of  the  Kingdom  are  pointing  the  finger  at  a 
disunited  and  ineffective  church,  it  is  no  time 
to  be  bickering  among  ourselves  over  theo- 
logical and  denominational  differences. 

If  there  is  any  scorn  or  self-satisfaction  in 
the  hearts  of  New  Theology  men,  any  hyper- 
criticism,  any  failure  to  recognize  the  funda- 
mental value  of  Christian  experience,  let  us 
repent  of  it — lest  we  use  our  liberty  as  a  cloak 
of  bondage. 

And  if  there  is  any  bitterness  toward  their 
brethren  on  the  part  of  the  defenders  of  ortho- 
doxy, any  ungenerous  and  un-Christlike  doubt 
of  their  sincerity  and  loyalty  to  the  faith, 
should  it  not  be  flung  to  Gehenna  where  it 
belongs? 

Behold  how  good  and  pleasant  it  is  for 
brethren  to  dwell  together  in  unity — nay,  how 
imperative,  if  we  would  be  true  to  our  faith  in 
one  Master  and  experience  the  truth  which 
makes  men  free! 


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